Untamed (26 page)

“I know what you’re thinking, milady, a woman of my age and all. But he had the shiniest dark eyes and the loveliest smile I’ve ever seen and … Well, sometimes at nights when the house is locked up and the chores done, a woman finds herself lonely.”

Though Kate didn’t say so, she more than understood.

How many nights now had she spent alone in the big four-poster, imagining what it would be like to feel her husband’s strong body pressing her down into the mattress, his callused hands caressing her, his beautiful mouth kissing her in places she’d never before thought to allow a man’s mouth to stray?

Shaking herself to the present predicament, she said, “I’ll do whatever I can to help. I meant what I said the other day. You are welcome to stay as long as you like.”

Hattie shook her head, the sunlight streaming through the window catching the silver strands threading through her golden hair. “A pregnant housekeeper will never do. I’ll go back home before I start to show.”

Kate wrapped her arm about the woman’s shoulders. “You’ll do no such thing. You’ll stay right here where I can see you’re cared for.”

Hattie sent her a sad little half smile. “That’s what you say now, but your husband may have other ideas.”

Kate was so used to making decisions on her own that she hadn’t considered Rourke might have an opinion on the matter until now. Many a housemaid had been let go without references once a baby bump began to show. Kate was determined that wouldn’t happen to Hattie. So far Rourke hadn’t interfered in her management of the house, and Kate meant to keep it that way. In the meantime, what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him—or anyone else.

“Don’t worry, Hattie. Things have a way of working out.”

The latter was her father’s saying. He’d repeated it on her wedding morning. Kate grudgingly admitted that for once he might have been on the mark. So far her marriage hadn’t proved to be the leg shackling she’d envisioned. In point, she found herself wishing she might spend more time with her husband, not less.

Hattie subsided into her seat. “Try as I might, I can’t find it in my heart to be entirely sorry things worked out as they have. I don’t expect you to understand, milady. You’re still so very young and lovely and used to having packs of gents trailing after you like lovesick pups. And now there’s the master, so sick in love with you he can scarce stand to let you out of his sight.”

Rourke sick in love with her? Kate felt as if her heart skidded to a halt, and then started up again at full gallop. Was it possible Hattie in her short stay had seen something Kate had missed?

Heart pounding, she slid to the edge of her chair, hoping the hunger in her heart wouldn’t show on her face. “What did you say?”

“That you’re used to—”

“No, after that. It had to do with my husband.”
My husband.
How strange and yet how utterly smoothly those two words rolled off her tongue. “What makes you say he loves me?”

Hattie flushed. “That was wrong of me, milady. I spoke out of turn. It isn’t my place to make personal remarks, only I can’t help it. I’ve seen the way he follows you with his eyes when you’re busy about your work. I do believe he loves you, loves you with his whole heart, though he’s too prideful and wary to say so.”

Kate’s mind cycled back to a conversation they’d had just the other day at breakfast. She’d popped up from her chair to refill the coffee, and he’d growled at her and bade her sit back down.

“Why is it you always keep yourself so busy? Afraid if you sit still long enough, someone might find you out?”

Suddenly nervous, Kate had held her water glass up to the light to inspect it for spots. “Find me out? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do.” Emerald eyes locked onto hers. “That you’re human after all, as human as the rest of us.”

As human as the rest of us.

She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now it occurred to her that his snappishness might be a clue that he was as unhappy about their separate sleeping arrangements as she was. She heartily hoped so.

Kate turned back to the maid. “You really think Mr. O’Rourke cares for me?” She knew she was fishing shamelessly, but it couldn’t be helped. If there was hope, she had to know.

Hattie rolled her eyes as though Kate had posed a silly question, indeed. “That man would move heaven and earth for you if only you’d toss a smile his way once in a while. But then, you know what they say about catching flies with honey—and not vinegar.”

After the past torturous week and a half, Kate was more than ready to let the honey flow. She only hoped she wouldn’t get caught in a sticky mess of her own making.

Late that evening, Kate downed a glass of sherry for courage before leaving her room to seek out her husband. The silence on the other side of the dressing-room door assured her Rourke had not yet retired for the night. That wasn’t unusual. He often stayed at his desk in the library late into the evenings, not drinking as her father did, but poring over his railway reports and investor portfolios.

Before leaving, she glanced one more time into the dressing mirror before sliding her arms into the sleeves of her silk wrapper. It and the matching nightgown beneath were the only items she’d purchased for her “trousseau.” The gown’s low-cut square bodice was beaded with seed pearls and paste diamonds, the slender skirt molding to her hips and thighs, the silk palest pink, almost translucent. She’d left her hair down and had spent the past quarter of an hour brushing the light brown waves to a high gloss. With the lamps turned low, her eyes appeared bright and her lips and cheeks a pleasing pink; whether the latter owed to the sherry, the excitement, or both, she couldn’t say. Unlike her wedding day, she looked more bridelike than spinsterish, or so she hoped. She prayed her husband would find her pretty.

Padding down the staircase, candle in hand, she told herself this nightly standoff of theirs was absurd, childish even. It was silly to keep it up. They were married, after all. Their wedding might have had the feeling of a farce, but the proceedings were quite legal. Now that they were married, they might as well make the best of it and “be fruitful and multiply” as the Bible counseled. Rourke made no bones about having married her to beget blue-blooded heirs. Though Kate had never admitted it aloud, she would like to have a child, children, in fact. Until now, she’d told herself that being a doting spinster auntie to Bea’s future children would suffice, but she no longer believed that lie.

She stepped off the landing and darted a quick look about. The household was bedded down for the night, but then it was almost eleven. She cinched the belt of her wrapper tighter and headed for the library at the back of the house. As castles went, Rourke’s was a small one, but even with the additional staff, they still only used a fraction of the rooms.

Outside the library door, she rapped lightly, the gingerly knock barely perceptible beyond the blood drumming her ears and the gavel-like thudding of her heart. When no call to enter came, it occurred to her he might have gone out, but no, the strip of light showing from beneath the door confirmed he had been within, even if he wasn’t still. Certainly someone must be. She’d impressed upon the servants the necessity of dousing any unattended fires or lamps before retiring for the night.

When a second louder knock went unanswered, she opened the door and entered. Snoring drew her attention to the desk. Rourke sprawled in his leather desk chair, his cravat balled on the blotter before him. Several shirt buttons were left undone, the starched white collar lying open to reveal his muscle-corded throat, and the sleeves rolled up to reveal powerful forearms dusted with reddish gold hairs. She lifted her gaze to his face. His auburn hair was mussed as though he’d raked it with his fingers not once but several times, and his wire-frame spectacles had slid past the bump on his nose. The eyes behind the glass lenses were firmly closed. Approaching, Kate sighed. How could she have ever overlooked how purely magnificently beautiful he was?

She set the candle down on the edge of the desk, half-hoping the sound would wake him. It didn’t. Her attention drifted downward to the discarded neckwear and the open book lying facedown beside it. Unlike the untouched books lining the library shelves, this one wasn’t new. Far from it, the leather binding was weathered and the hand tooling on the spine had lost most of its gilding. Like her idol, Isabella Beeton, Kate had a great respect for books and definite opinions about their proper care. To leave a book lying open thus ran the very real risk of cracking the spine. Were it to slide off and fall to the floor, precious vellum pages might be irreparably bent.

By habit, her gaze went to the title on the spine. The tooled leather lettering had lost most of gilding, but it was still legible.
The Taming of the Shrew.
How odd. Kate wouldn’t have pegged Rourke for a reader of either Shakespeare or plays. From what he’d told her, until his friend, Gavin’s wife, Daisy, had made her Drury Lane debut as Rosalind in
As
You Like It
that past spring, he’d never set foot inside a proper theatre. Resolved not to wake him, she leaned over, picked up the book, and closed it properly. As she did, a vellum note card fluttered out.

She picked it up and glanced at the precise, bold script. Whomever had penned the note was a fair hand and most definitely male.

What to give the man who has everything? Daisy and I pondered that dilemma and for good or for ill, we settled on this. Read it as a play or employ it as a marital-advice manual, however you see fit. Either way, I hope you’ll pardon the unconventional wedding gift. We are only trying to do our part to smooth out the course of true love. Congratulations, Gavin and Daisy.

Marital-advice manual? It had been years since Kate last read the classic play, and her memory was foggy at best. Flipping through the musty-smelling pages without regard for their age, she felt as if the pieces to a bizarre but embarrassingly obvious puzzle were fitting together. The ridiculous clothes Rourke had worn to the church and his whisking her away before the bridal breakfast, the lost luggage and miserable trek from the train station to the castle, the wedding-night supper that wasn’t sufficiently savory to be partaken of, at least not by her—each scenario had been borrowed from the Bard to bend her to his will, to tame her. Marital-advice manual, indeed! Her husband wasn’t only reading Shakespeare’s play. He was adapting it to play her—for a fool.

We are all fools in love.

The other night she’d been too muzzy-headed to recall the author of the popular line, but now she did—Shakespeare, of course.

She glanced up at his face, so innocent in sleep, and seriously considered slamming the book atop his head. But no, with a thick skull such as his, the only thing dented would be the book. Mrs. Beeton would be turning in her pristine grave.

Kate stuck the note back inside the pages and set the closed book back down on the blotter. She was furious and more than a little hurt. Inside her, some remnant of the foolish, romantic girl she’d once been had believed Rourke might truly care for her. Hattie’s words earlier that day had stoked the flames of her fledgling hopes. Finding the play and note confirmed he was no different from Dutton or the other so-called gentlemen she’d dodged back in London. Like them, he saw her only as a conquest to be wagered on and won. No, not won—broken.

Backing away toward the door, she felt her hurt hardening into steely resolve. She would best Rourke at his own game, make herself so disagreeable, so
disobedient,
that he would be more than happy to put her on that London-bound train. Following in the footsteps of other fashionable couples, they need not see each other more than once or twice a year. In truth, they need not see each other at all.

She stepped out into the hallway. Resisting the urge to slam the door, she pulled it quietly closed. She’d come downstairs with the hope that she and her husband might begin the next chapter of their lives as friends, lovers, and one day, parents. Now she knew that it would never come to pass. They were a closed book, she and Rourke, and Kate resolved that this time neither Shakespeare nor meddlesome friends would write the final scene.