Untamed (9 page)

Kate flattened her back against the door and considered what to do. Part of her hoped that if she waited, he would grow discouraged and go away, and the other part of her hoped he would remain. Leaving it to fate, she started counting slowly to five. One, two, three …

Another, harder knock sounded, the pummeling causing the wood at her back to shake. Drawing a deep breath, she turned about and opened the door.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

From the step below, he doffed his bowler and smiled up at her. “Good morning to you, too, milady.” His gaze snaked around her right shoulder to the door, the turned-up knocker an undisputed indicator she was “at home.”

Kate let out a huff, if only to distract from the pitch of her suddenly fast-beating heart. “I suppose you might as well come in.” Knees wobbly, she stepped back to admit him.

He entered, his broad shoulders seeming to fill the narrow foyer, his presence dwarfing the delicate furnishings, making them seem almost doll-sized. Turning about, he announced, “Actually, I’m here not to come in so much as to take you out, if you will, that is. I have a friend for you to meet.”

Even for a Scot, he must be the most indecorous man she’d ever met. “I scarcely know you.”

He had the audacity to wink. “We could remedy that, and we
shall
remedy that, but first let me introduce you to my friend.”

Mentally calculating whether there would be sufficient tea treats to serve two hungry men, she glanced beyond him but saw no one about. “Very well, invite him in.”

“My friend is a ’her,’ actually.”

Kate’s heart dropped. She might not want him, she most certainly did not want him, and yet she’d been flattered to think he might want her, if only a little. The other night at the charity ball, she’d been certain he was flirting. Could she have misread him so completely?

He shook his head. His eyes were beaming. “And I’m afraid that’s not possible. The friend is rather large for a town house.”

So, his lady friend was fat! Kate knew it was bad of her to feel so positively buoyant about that, but Lord help her, she did.

“I find that difficult to fathom. Surely you exaggerate. Do invite her in.”

He gestured toward the door she was reaching to close. She followed his gaze out to the street where two horses, a chestnut mare and a black bay, were tethered to the hitching post.

She turned back to him. “Your friend is a horse?” He nodded. “I find that horses are the best sort of friends. Treat ’em right, and they’re loyal as the day is long. Even better, they canna talk, yet they seem to understand fair near every word I say.”

He grinned at her, and Kate felt her lips twitching. She’d rather die than admit it, but his brash charm was winning her over. Seen in the broad light of day, he was better looking than she recalled, almost handsome, in fact.

“Oh, very well, but I can only come out for a minute.” She grabbed her coat off the hall tree and shrugged it on, not giving him the opportunity to do the gentlemanly thing and aid her, and then followed him out. A wrought-iron fence bordered the frost-parched patch of front lawn. He held open the gate for her, and she walked up to the post where the two horses were tethered.

Drawn to the mare because she had a look of Princess, she held out her palm. Soft nickering and then nuzzling confirmed the horse was ready to be friends. Kate pulled off her glove and reached out to stroke the white blaze marking the space between the animal’s dark, intelligent eyes.

“Well, hullo, sweetheart, and what is your name?”

Rourke let the gate swing closed. He stepped out onto the sidewalk, drawing up close to Kate. “Her name’s Buttercup, at least for now. I’m considering buying her. Her present owner said I might borrow her for the day. We’re trying each other out, Buttercup and I. What do you think of her?”

Kate couldn’t imagine why he should care for her opinion one way or the other. As far as he knew, she might be wholly ignorant of horses. She wasn’t, of course, but that was beside the point. Nonetheless, she stepped back to run her gaze over the animal.

“She appears to be healthy and well cared for,” she said at length. “Her eyes are clear, she seems calm and of good disposition, and her coat lies flat and appears smooth and shiny. I don’t see any markings to indicate parasites or bruising.”

Healthy skin was elastic. To test, she reached up and gently lifted a fold of skin from the horse’s neck and then let go. The fold disappeared immediately, a good sign.

She turned back to Rourke, wondering if he might be gulling her. She supposed he was more than capable of telling a good horse from a bad one. Given his wealth, the purchase of one mare wouldn’t count as a major setback.

She found his gaze riveted upon her face. His thickly lashed emerald eyes had little flecks of gold bordering the irises. She’d never before seen such extraordinary eyes on a man, but then again she’d never before found herself standing dumbstruck on a sidewalk staring up at one, either.

Kate was accustomed to being chased by packs of men, but not to being the object of any one man’s single-minded regard. The former was akin to how a fox must feel when the hounds closed in, whereas the latter felt … well, very different. For once, she wasn’t eager to get away. In point, there was nowhere else she’d rather be. The bracing air aside, she would have been happy to stare back at him for hours on end.

But, of course, that would be folly. Her object was to marry off Bea, not embroil herself in that dubious state. With her ill luck, she’d likely land a scapegrace like her father. The men with whom she was acquainted had done little to raise her estimation of their sex. Beyond that, she wasn’t convinced Mr. O’Rourke was the marrying sort. That she even found herself thinking of him in those terms sounded an inner hue and cry.

“I think Buttercup here is a sound investment. Of course, to render a complete opinion, I would have to observe her move.” Cursing the quaver in her voice, she averted her gaze to safer territory, Buttercup. She caressed the animal’s coat for a lingering moment, crooning endearments as once she had to Princess. “Yes, you’re a beauty, a fine lady, aren’t you?”

The mare nuzzled her, searching for treats, and she laughed at the wonderfully cold, sloppy press of that seeking nose. She’d all but forgotten how much she missed having a horse.

Mr. O’Rourke laughed with her. “In that case, come out riding with me. Afterward you can render a full report.”

She looked up to find him smiling at her, a slow, lazy smile that set her pulse hammering. Despite the cold, shame heated her cheeks. Dear God, he must have fancied she was fishing! And perhaps she had been, if only just a little.

“I can’t,” she said, the declaration coming out more sharply than she’d intended. Softening her tone, she added, “As you can see, this is my day to entertain callers.”

“I’m a caller, am I not?”

She couldn’t help smiling at that. “Not an official one. Had you waited until this afternoon to drop by, you might have been invited to stay for tea.”

His eyes locked on hers. “I’m no all that fond of tepid tea or stale cakes—or empty conversation. And I loathe waiting.”

Kate couldn’t blame him, especially about the waiting part. Still, she had a reputation as a shrew to uphold, and so far that morning she hadn’t been doing her part.

“For the record, my tea is not tepid, but piping hot, and my cakes are freshly baked.”

She almost added
by her,
but stopped short of giving herself away. Whatever rumors had made the rounds about her family’s finances, an earl’s daughter admitting to baking her own tea things would more than confirm them.

“Come anyway.”

She stepped back from the horse, ashamed by the depth of her longing. “I can’t.”

She was tempted, she truly was. But she had an obligation to Beatrice to play hostess. If Bea was ever to land a suitable husband, they had to keep up the semblance of genteel living.

He fixed his gaze on her, one of those long, lingering looks that made her feel as though she were standing before him in her shift—or nothing at all—rather than bundled into a sturdy winter coat. “Can’t or won’t?”

One roan-colored brow hedged upward to almost reach the small white scar riding low on his forehead. She hadn’t noticed it the other night, but she did now. For a mad half moment, Kate badly wanted to reach up and press her lips against the blemish, to trace that tantalizing half moon with the very tip of her tongue and press his palm against her breast.

Dear God, what is coming over me?

Whatever was the matter with her, it was all the more reason she must not give in and go. “In this case, they are one and the same.” She heard the wavering in her voice and knew by the sudden gleam in his eyes he’d heard it, too.

He shrugged, and Kate’s gaze riveted on how the breadth of his shoulders pulled at the broadcloth of his coat, stretching the fabric to its limit. Her heart gave another of those strange little flutters.

“Why not let your callers leave
their
cards this once and instead come with me?” He leaned forward suddenly, so close that she could smell the spiciness of his shaving soap and feel the brush of cinnamon-spiced breath on her face. “I would have wagered you’re a woman who does exactly as she pleases. But then again, if you’re set on spending such a fine day indoors with a pack of old biddies, I canna stop you. I’ll just be on my way then.”

The invisible devil perched on her left shoulder urged her to cast her cares to the wind and go with him, this once overruling the dutiful angel perched on her right. She reached around him and turned the door knocker down. “I can only come out for a few hours. I’ll need to be back by two o’clock at the latest.”

“Agreed.”

“And I’ll need to change. Give me ten minutes.”

“Make it five. Buttercup is growing restless and so am I.”

Almost to the door, she stopped and cast a grinning glance back at him over her shoulder. “Ten, and you will be waiting when I come out again.”

She disappeared inside the house, leaving him standing at the curb with the two horses—and his guilt-burdened conscience. Luring her into kissing him in public would leave her irreparably compromised. Once she was, her choices were to accept his suit or live out her days as a social pariah. At least that was how he understood these matters to work. Looked at in that light, the wager was a godsend to his purpose, and yet if he had the choice to make again, he would refuse and let nature take a gentler course.

He salved his conscience by reminding himself how rudely she had treated him the other night. Still, it was a pity he must make public sport of her. What sport passed between them in private once they were wed would be a horse of a different color.

In the meantime, he would wait for her. Though he wasn’t patient by nature, he’d learned there were some things in life, treasures precious and rare, that made waiting worthwhile. The night before he’d made up his mind that Lady Katherine Lindsey was one of them.

n hour later, Kate and Rourke walked their horses around the sandy track of Hyde Park’s Rotten Row. Other than a few stragglers, they had the area to themselves. At the height of the season, the park would have been crammed with riders on horseback and ladies and gentlemen parading about in small, fashionable conveyances, but it was still February and most members of the ton remained rusticating on their country estates. The situation suited Kate. If she was going to fall upon her face in the dirt, she’d sooner not have her peers as witnesses.

She hadn’t been on a horse since Princess, and then she’d rarely ridden sidesaddle. At first she’d worried her equestrian skills might have eroded, that she might not be able to keep her seat, but the mare showed herself to be docile and responsive to her somewhat rusty commands. They’d started out at a walk, building to a canter. Several circuits around the track, Kate’s confidence had returned sufficiently to try a gallop. After the first few circuits, she relaxed, feeling as though she were floating on clouds, of one mind with the mare.

She ventured a glance over to Mr. O’Rourke. It struck her that he wasn’t wearing his spectacles today. She supposed he must only need them for reading or other close work. Mounted on the bay beside her, he looked dapper in a double-breasted driving coat of black-and-white wool houndstooth check and gabardine trousers. His riding boots, she couldn’t help but notice, were polished to a high gloss.

So far, his behavior had been as perfectly correct as his clothing. He had shown himself to be both a gentleman in bearing and an obliging companion, content to let her set the gait and pace, solicitous of her comfort and safety but not fawningly so. Kate had spent more than half of her life serving as a keeper to her father and a mother to her little sister. In recent years, placating creditors and dodging would-be suitors angling for an earl’s daughter had consumed what little free time she’d had left. Before today, she’d forgotten how good it felt to release her responsibilities for a few hours and simply enjoy herself.