Untamed (19 page)

Occasionally some of the uniformed workers who passed them by recognized Rourke, but he tapped the side of his nose, signaling them to silence. Before stepping onto the first-class car, he turned over their trunks to a porter with some very special instructions.

They settled into their first-class compartment. Silence descended. Leaning back against the tufted leather seat, Rourke glanced over at his bride. Seated across from him, her white-knuckled hands wrapped about the handle of the unwieldy-looking carpetbag in her lap, she was so far keeping her own counsel. Silent as the sphinx, was more like it. Though the train had yet to leave the station, she’d fixed her gaze out ever since they’d first sat down.

Ordinarily he wouldn’t have minded. In his opinion, most people prattled too much as it was. The ritual of silent prayer meetings at Roxbury House had touched his soul in a way that traditional church services never had. Had he been born in an earlier era, the medieval period when his castle had been built, he might have made a fair monk, not because he was especially godly or religious, and certainly not because he was interested in celibacy, but because he liked the idea of living in a community where people reserved speaking for those times when they truly had something to say.

But in this case the silence felt more leaden than golden, the dull weight of it making the waiting time stretch out. Rourke felt as though they’d been sitting stalled on the tracks for hours, though, of course, that was not so. Wondering what time it was, he pulled out his timepiece, and then remembered he’d left his glasses in the pocket of his discarded “wedding” suit. That was going to be a problem.

He stretched out the fob chain to his wife. “Can you tell me the time?”

She swiveled her head from the window. “Of course, I can tell time. Do I seem a simpleton?”

Rourke sucked in a breath. While he’d rather enjoyed the antics at the church and the breakfast, too, he could already see this taming business was turning into hard labor, a labor of… love. “I asked if you would read
me
the time. I havena my glasses.”

“Oh.” She gave the watch face a quick glance as people with perfect vision might do. “It’s coming on a quarter ’til one.”

“How close to coming on?”

Amber eyes flashed to his face. “A minute or two, give or take? Why, are you in some sort of rush? Is someone
chasing
us?”

Actually, Ralph Sylvester was secreted in one of the second-class cabins. Once they disembarked at their destination station of Linlithgow, Rourke intended to give the butler-cum-valet-cum-coachman a head start to the castle. The latter was crucial to setting up the next act of his personal play.

But beyond any behind-the-scenes machinations, Rourke was a man who ate, slept, and rose by the clock. He took considerable pride in the fact that, according to the latest timetable report, his trains never veered off schedule by more than a minute. Perhaps it came from having little or no structure as a child, but living according to rigorous routine felt more a freedom than a restraint or imposition. Once he’d left Roxbury House, he’d missed the bells that had regulated meals, lessons, recreation, sleeping and waking, and even worship.

He glanced across to Kate, her head once more turned to look out onto the platform. Rourke wasn’t fooled. He didn’t for a moment doubt that she was every whit as aware of him as he was of her. Unfortunately for him, she was also just as stubborn.

Leaning back in his seat, he found himself studying the woman with whom he would share not only his bed, but also his life, the next fifty years of it at least. From the few embraces they’d shared, he knew her skin really was that petal soft, her hair that sweet smelling, her lips and tongue as delectable as a ripe peach. Were circumstances different and theirs a normal marriage, he might well choose this moment to draw the car’s velvet curtain all the way closed and reach for her. He’d never made love on a moving train, or a stalled one, for that matter. Given that he owned the whole bloody railway, that fact struck him as both ironic and a shame. He had the urge to reach out and lift his bride onto his lap to straddle him, tunnel a hand beneath her skirts and finger her, the honey from her sex trickling like treacle onto his hand, covering his mouth over hers to muffle her first soft moans and then her throaty cries. The fantasy, vivid, brought on one hell of a cock stand.

He shifted in his seat. Inadvertently his knee bumped her leg.

She swiveled her head around and pinned him with a glare. “Must you fidget so?”

Fidget—Jaysus, if only she knew.

He reached into the brown paper bag of food items he’d bought from the vendor cart back at King’s Cross. “Apple?”

“No, thank you.”

“If you fancy a hot meal, there’s a dining car a few compartments down from this one.”

He ought to know. The northbound line on which he’d booked their seats was one of his, the shiny black and red steam locomotives the finest of his fleet, the blueprint of their interior laid out in his head.

She shook her head.

“Are you certain? We dinna disembark ’til Linlithgow.

That’s almost an eight-hour journey, mind.”

“Yes, Mr. O’Rourke, so the printed ticket said.”

“I have a name, you know. It’s Patrick.” For whatever reason, he still very badly wanted to hear her call him by his given name.

“I am aware of that. And a middle name, as well. Donald?” Her lips twitched.

“Donald was my mother’s da’s name.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Perhaps I’ll call you Donald. You just might look like a Donald.”

She was teasing him, but at least she was talking to him again. “Dinna dare. If you won’t call me by my given name, then call me Rourke as my friends do.”

Her brows lifted. “Ah, yes, and you and I are such great friends, aren’t we?”

The sarcasm wasn’t lost on him, but for the time being he would do his best to ignore it. “As we’re wedded now, here’s hoping we’re no enemies.”

Back in London, two former Roxbury House friends-turned-married-lovers stood in the crowded greenroom of their newly renovated theatre, sipping champagne and shaking their heads at their friend Rourke’s extraordinary telegraphed news.

Kate and I wed. STOP.

Taking train to castle in Scotland. STOP.

Come up for Gav’s birthday next month. STOP.

The telegram arrived before Daisy stepped out onstage as Hermia in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Fortunately Hadrian and Callie, both witnesses to the hasty wedding and sworn to secrecy until now, had arrived before the final act to fill in the glossed-over details. Apparently not only had their brash friend coerced Lady Katherine into marrying him, but once she had, he’d swept her off her feet and carried her away—literally.

Gavin took a sip from Daisy’s champagne flute and then passed the glass back. “Rourke wedded to a blue-blooded shrew; there’s a play in that, as well as ample poetic justice. If I hadn’t helped him get the special license, I might think he was playing a practical joke on us.”

“Why, darling, that brilliant mind of yours isn’t only for legal matters, is it?” Catching his blank look, she elaborated, “As Shakespeare might say if he were still alive, the play’s the thing. In this case, the play’s already written and has been for several hundred years.”

Gavin’s gaze connected with hers, and a broad smile broke over his face. “You don’t mean
The Taming of the Shrew,
by any chance?”

She nodded. “Indeed. I’d say given the circumstances, a special wedding gift is in order, wouldn’t you? You never know, but it might make for …
instructive
reading.”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “That depends upon Rourke actually reading it. I’ve yet to see him pick up anything that wasn’t a newspaper or railway financial report.”

“You assume Lady Katherine is the one in need of taming.”

He sent her a tolerant smile. “In that case, I’ll post it first thing in the morning.”

She reached out and swiped her thumb over the champagne bead resting on his sexy lower lip. As much as she loved a party, she was very much looking forward to their private celebration after the guests had gone.

“Perfect, my love, pray do.”

“Married!” Felicity pulled her head from the musky space between her latest keeper’s tented knees and looked up into his strained face. “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

On the cusp of climax, Lord Haversham raised his perspiring head from the pillow. “It just happened this morning. Lindsey said O’Rourke refused to stay for the wedding breakfast. Threw the little shrew over his shoulder like a sack of corn and carried her off to the train station. God, I would have loved to have seen the bitch’s face. With luck, that meddlesome package will be out of my hair. Good riddance. The younger chit is biddable enough. She should present no problem at all.”

His heavy hand landed at the back of her head, pushing her down, but Felicity reared out of reach. “You should have told me.”

His lordship scowled. “What’s it to do with you?”

Swinging her long legs over the bedside, Felicity shrugged. She hadn’t even known Rourke was back in London, but then these days she hardly traveled in West End drawing-room circles. “I fancy my information as much as the next person. I’ve certainly helped you to yours a time or two.”

Considering the question, she padded over to the chipped dresser, moving slowly to give him time to appreciate her buxom backside and delicious curves. Of all her lovers, a considerable number particularly as she was just twenty-three, there was only one man who’d ever truly possessed the power to not only satisfy, but enslave her. Patrick O’Rourke—Rourke—had always given her as good a shagging as he’d got. Felicity wasn’t prone to self-reflection, let alone regret, but this once she had to admit she’d been a bloody fool to let him loose. Given time, she might have brought him around to the idea of their marrying. Even if he’d held the hard line—and Felicity’s mouth watered at the memory of just how very hard he got and how very long he remained that way—being his mistress had brought its own rewards.

But beyond the carnal delights he could deliver, Rourke was a rich man and a generous one. He’d purchased the former Palace supper club to help out a friend, but he’d yet to reopen it. Before its closing, the popular Covent Garden nightspot had launched the careers of several stars of the stage, including the actress formerly known as Delilah du Lac. The music-hall chanteuse, whose real name was Daisy Lake, had gone on to debut in a proper play at Drury Lane. With her new husband, also a friend of Rourke’s, she was about to open her own theatre in the East End.

Felicity’s stage career was progressing at a considerably slower pace. She’d left Edinburgh for London two years ago, and by now she really ought to be a top liner somewhere. Instead she was stuck dancing in the chorus at the Royal Alhambra Palace on the east side of Leicester Square. Most of her fellow dancers seemed to have no ambition beyond trolling the canteen between performances and flirting with the gentlemen patrons for pairs of gloves and shots of gin. Felicity aspired to better, but she was coming to wonder if “better” was, indeed, on the way. The present shabby suite of rented rooms where Haversham had set her up was fast losing its charm.

Haversham called to her from the bed, “Surely you don’t mean to leave me now, like … this?”

In the rust-spotted mirror, she caught a glimpse of his tortured face and smiled. The sadist in her loved that she was leaving him aching.

Folding her arms across her berry-tipped breasts, she turned about to face him. “That all depends on how cooperative you show yourself to be.”

He scowled again and braced his hand about his cock. “What the devil? I’ll play any game you fancy, only come over here and finish this first.”

As much as Felicity enjoyed toying with the whips and paddles and silk ties tucked into her bedside table, she had more important matters on her mind. “All in good time, ducks, but first tell me everything you know about the younger Lindsey sister—and I mean
everything.”