Untamed (33 page)

Her gaze traveled the room. The bedsheets were rumpled, the floor strewn with clothes. A barely touched breakfast tray sat abandoned on the bedside table, a perfectly good chocolate croissant lying uneaten because even chocolate couldn’t come close to the deliciousness of making love with her husband. It had all been so lovely. Oh, why did happy times always have to end so very quickly?

“Katie?”

Rourke sat up in bed, the sheet drifting to his waist. Even with her fine mood fading, she couldn’t help but catch her breath at how purely magnificently beautiful he was. Kate wasn’t given to displays of emotion, but the feeling of foreboding settling in her belly was too strong to be denied. She bounded over to the bed and threw herself down next to him, needing to feel his strength, his warmth.

Pressing her face into the warm crevice of corded throat and broad shoulder, she said, “Hold me.”

His arms went around her. He pressed a kiss against her temple and tightened his hold. “What is, sweetheart? What’s the trouble?”

She sighed. “This past week, it’s been so lovely, hasn’t it?”

“Aye, it has, but, Kate, love, why are you acting as though ’tis come to an end? We have the rest of our lives before us, my heart, fifty-odd years and then some. We’re only at the start of it all. Think of this week as the beginning of Act I of a verra long and verra happy play.”

In that moment, Kate didn’t only
think
she loved him. She knew it. “Promise me my sister’s coming won’t change anything. Promise that we’ll still go on as we have this past week.”

“Of course, we shall. Why wouldn’t we? Surely it’s only a holiday visit, and even if it werena, a castle is a verra big place, mind.”

“Humor me and promise anyway.”

He carried her hand to his mouth and brushed her knuckles with his lips. “In that case, milady, I’ll do a good deal better than promise. I do solemnly swear.”

h, Kat, do stop fussing. If I’d known you would ring a peal over my head, I never would have come. I wish I had not.”

Bea faced Kate with arms folded. They were in one of the newly appointed chambers in the east tower. Bea’s friend Felicity was in the room next door.

“I’m not ’ringing a peal,’ as you call it. I’m simply trying to discover what is going on. But if you don’t want to stay, you’re free to leave.”

Kate had not called her baby sister’s bluff often over the years. Had she done so, perhaps Bea might not have turned out quite so self-centered and spoiled. Looking back, she supposed she’d tried so hard to compensate for a missing mother’s love and a father’s neglect that she’d erred too far in the opposite direction. But what was done was done.

Bea’s shoulders slumped, and her chin dipped. Her bottom lip stuck out as it had when she was a very little girl. She poked at the carpet with the toe of one satin slipper.

Gentling her tone, Kate confirmed, “You haven’t anywhere else to go—have you?”

Bea shook her head. “Aunt Lavinia is horrid. She wouldn’t purchase a gown for me that was any color other than white. Papa drinks all the time—and gambles.” She said the latter in a hushed voice as though it wasn’t common knowledge. “After Hattie left to come to you, I couldn’t bear it.”

Kate didn’t for a minute think that her father nearly losing the estate to her husband would be the catalyst for him turning over a new leaf. Gaming was like a fever firing his blood. It would only be a matter of time before he got himself into another scrape, and when he did, she wouldn’t be surprised to find him knocking on her door, too.

“What of your new friend, Miss Drummond. She seems … pleasant enough.”

In truth, Kate had an uneasy feeling about the young woman. Though her behavior had been decorous enough when Kate showed her and Bea to their rooms, there was something about her slanted green eyes, a serpentlike watchfulness that Kate couldn’t like.

Because of it, she was moved to ask, “How did the two of you meet?”

“Papa’s friend Lord Haversham introduced us.”

Alarm bells sounded. “She is a friend of Lord Haversham’s?”

Bea nodded. “Felicity’s a lot of fun. She knows all sorts of clever things.”

I’ll wager she does.

“You and your, uh … friend may stay through the Christmas holiday, but in the meantime, you must write Aunt Lavinia and make apologies for running off. As for the other, I’ll see if I can’t convince her to let you expand your wardrobe beyond white.”

Eager to get back to Patrick—odd, how she’d fallen into using his given name without thinking—Kate headed for the door. “I’ll leave you to settle in.”

“Kate?”

Kate turned about. “Yes?”

“Thank you for being my sister.”

Sitting before the dressing-table mirror, Felicity pulled the stopper from the vial of
eau de cologne
and dabbed a liberal dose behind either ear. The jasmine scent once had driven Rourke mad, or the nearest thing to it. So far she hadn’t seen him, though she meant to remedy that state of affairs and soon.

She’d gotten an eyeful of his very proper English wife, however. Pondering her rival, Felicity couldn’t comprehend the attraction. She might be merely a squire’s daughter, yet her looks easily trumped her rival’s. The little brown woman was hardly a proper armful. A big, strapping Scot like Rourke needed a woman who could match him in every way, but particularly in the bedchamber. Like all men, he fancied females who told him what he wanted to hear. She would have thought Kate’s brash honesty would have worn thin by now. Felicity was careful to coat her every word in honey. When honey wasn’t enough, she outright lied.

Not only was Lady Kate stunted and fork-tongued, but she was old. From what Haversham had told her, her tight-arsed “ladyship” must be thirty or nearing it. How could she possibly hope to compete with Felicity’s apparent sweet disposition, youth, and flamboyant good looks, looks that deserved to be showcased onstage?

From what the sister, Bea, so far had blabbed on the dreary train trek north, all was not as it should be between the newlyweds. Reports of blackmail, mad weddings, and missed bridal breakfasts had cheered Felicity considerably. She meant to exploit every weakness and seize every opportunity to widen whatever cracks there were so that she might insinuate herself back into Rourke’s life. Assuming Lady Katherine could be dispatched, she really wouldn’t mind marrying him, but beyond all, she wanted him to open that theatre for her.

She’d been a fool to release him in the first place, but when one was young and hungry for adventure, it wasn’t always easy to know what to do. Fortunately all the signs pointed to the foolish act being remedied. There were cracks in this marriage that, if subjected to the proper amount of pressure, might lead to an irredeemable splintering in twain.

Felicity meant to exert pressure on each and every one.

Rourke was finishing dressing for the day when Kate returned from settling in her sister. The adjoining door stood open on purpose. He’d been hoping for another glimpse of her before they both started their days. Catching her eye, he beckoned her inside.

“My sister has run away from home after a fashion. I’ve told her she and her companion may stay through Boxing Day. She has nowhere else to go.”

The little wrinkle appeared in the center of her forehead. By now he knew it only showed itself when she was worrying. “Of course, she can stay.”

She regarded him, some of the wariness leaving her eyes. “You don’t mind?”

He found his smile. “I didn’t say that. Selfish lout that I am, I fancied having you to myself a while longer, say the next fifty-odd years. But she is your sister, your blood, which makes her my responsibility, as well.”

The gratitude shining from her beautiful eyes shamed him more than any spoken reproach ever could. Accustomed as she was to doing for others, to giving but rarely receiving, she was pathetically easy to please. He only hoped she liked the surprise gift he had planned for her. He was going into Edinburgh to pick “it” up.

She shook her head, eyes shining. “Oh, Patrick, you are good to me.”

She stood on tiptoe, wound her arms about his neck, and pressed her lips to the side of his neck, surprising and delighting him with that one small, sweet kiss. The dazzling smile she sent him had him forgetting to breathe.

Patrick.
She’d said his name yet again. His heart warmed; his chest swelled. “If I’m good to you, Katie, it’s only because goodness is your due.” He almost added “because I love you,” but stopped before he might. He’d tell her when they could be private and not distracted by guests. “I have to go into Edinburgh to attend some business. I’m afraid it’s going to be an overnight trip, but I’ll be back by tomorrow afternoon.”

Her face fell, but she quickly covered her disappointment with a smile. “I suppose I’ve gotten used to having you not only around but all to myself. I forget you have responsibilities, a company to oversee.”

He pulled her to him, gratified she apparently didn’t want him to go. “Katie, I meant what I said earlier this morning. The honeymoon isna over for us; it’s just beginning.”

Kate was in the kitchen the next afternoon when Rourke returned from his trip. She looked up from the dough she’d been rolling on the marble counter to see him coming toward her. Forgetting the flour on her apron, she dropped the rolling pin and launched herself into his arms.

Behind them, one of the new kitchen maids tittered, and the cook cleared her throat. Kate was too happy to pay them any heed. Since knowing Rourke—Patrick—appearances didn’t hold nearly the weight they’d used to in her life.

“You’re back,” she said, then marveled at what a simpleton love had made her. Still, she pulled back to look at him as though he’d been gone a year rather than a single day.

“I am, and I’ve come bearing gifts or at least a gift.” “You didn’t have to buy me anything.” His emerald eyes twinkled. “Think of it as an early Christmas present.”

“Early, indeed. Christmas is a fortnight away.” Two weeks was not much time. Hattie was even now directing the decorating of the great hall with bows of holly and evergreen. It would be their first Christmas together, first Boxing Day, first Twelfth Night. She wanted to do everything properly. His friend Gavin’s birthday fell in December, too, and they’d invited him, his wife, Daisy, and Hadrian and Callie to come up and celebrate. Kate was looking forward to becoming better acquainted with Rourke’s friends. She already knew Hadrian and had met and liked Callie. She hoped the other couple would become her friends, as well. Perhaps their “Roxbury House Orphans’ Club,” as they’d called it, would admit her as a fifth, albeit honorary member. She hoped so.