Hope Tarr

by Untamed

  What irony that his present abject misery owed to how very far he’d risen in life. And yet at times such as this, when he found himself rubbing elbows with jewel-festooned females and their mustached husbands and beaux, the latter sporting shiny gold watch fobs and fat money clips, he felt the telltale tingling creeping into his palms and the fingers of his right hand, his working hand, starting up with the old familiar flexing jig.

  Forcing his fingers still, he reminded himself he didn’t need to be that person anymore. He wasn’t that person. And if the prospect of a pearl-studded brooch or gold tie clasp still had the power to make his hands prickle, the delectable yet-to-be-met “she” brought another very particular part of him to life with the beginnings of a long-unsatisfied ache.

  “She” was Lady Katherine Lindsey, daughter to the Earl of Romney and one of London’s preeminent Professional Beauties, young ladies of rank who condescended to allow their pocket-sized photographic portraits, or cartes postales, to be displayed for sale in shops such as his photographer friend, Harry’s. She was also the woman whom the day before Rourke had announced to his two friends he meant to marry.

  Harry Stone, known to the public as Hadrian St. Claire, sidestepped the protruding plumes of the grand dame in front of him and directed his gaze out onto the milling crowd. “And so she shall. She may have arrived already.”

  Standing on Rourke’s opposite side, his barrister friend, Gavin Carmichael, added his calming voice to the fray. “Mind how long it took us to get through that receiving line. Guests are still arriving. Have patience, Rourke. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

  If Rourke lacked patience, and admittedly he did, it was with good cause. After years in Scotland, he’d come back to London with one purpose: to find a blue-blooded Englishwoman for his wife. He wasn’t looking to make a love match. That would take longer than the fortnight he had left to woo and win. From what he could tell, like Happily Ever After endings, love was the stuff of fairy tales. Once he found a woman of proper pedigree, pleasing looks, and breeding age, he would consider his search ended and his posterity well served. A highborn mother meant that his future children would never be on the receiving end of “the cut direct,” that canny knack aristocrats had for looking through you as though you were made of glass, dirty glass, and then flaring their nostrils and curling their lips as horses did when they smelled something rank.

  In the social whirlwind of the past two weeks, he’d so far encountered prim debutantes, brash American heiresses, and randy widows; the latter promising to provide any number of carnal delights. None of them had moved him to give more than a glance or smile in passing, certainly not a proposal of marriage. Determined though he was not to go home empty-handed, he couldn’t stretch out his stay indefinitely. He’d neglected his railway company in Edinburgh far too long. The railway business was as cutthroat as any street scam, the threat from rival companies calling for constant vigilance, the opportunities for swallowing up the smaller fish boundlessly lucrative.

  Discouraged, the other day he’d set out for a wee stroll, his meandering footsteps leading him to bustling Parliament Square. That was where he encountered “her,” or rather her likeness in the form of a pocket-sized hand-tinted photograph resting atop the velvet-covered shelving inside Harry’s shop window. The photograph was shot in profile, the woman’s slender hands resting demurely in her lap, her wavy, honey-colored hair drawn up to display the sweet contour of high-boned cheek, lush mouth, and softly rounded chin. Unfortunately the shop was shut up, the shades drawn, the sign turned to closed. Rourke had stood still as a statue in the bracing cold, his face pressed up to the glass, his good eye employed in memorizing every detail of that lovely fine-boned face.

  Once he got back to Gavin’s flat, he hadn’t lost any time in asking after her.

  “There’s a photograph of a young woman in Harry’s shop window. Dark eyes, light brown hair, hands folded in her lap. Do you know her?”

  Gavin had looked up from his open copy of the London Times. “That would be Katherine Lindsey. She’s one of Harry’s PBs, Professional Beauties, and by far his best seller. They’ve worked out an arrangement where she sits for him exclusively. Don’t scowl so. It’s all done in the best of taste, and for the most part, the husbands don’t mind.”

  “She’s married, then?” On the walk back to Gavin’s, he’d tried tempering his enthusiasm. For all he knew, his mystery lady might very well be married, engaged, or otherwise beyond his touch. Still, hearing the confirmation sent his hopes sinking like a body weighted with stones tossed into the Thames.

  Gavin shook his head. “If you bothered to read anything beyond financial reports, you’d know the lady has

  made something of a reputation for herself. She’s been engaged three times, and each time she has cried off before the banns were read.”

  Intrigued as much by her story as her face, he’d found himself making excuses to stop by Harry’s shop for a second, third, and even a fourth look. Finally he’d swallowed his pride, plunked down his guinea, and purchased a copy of the portrait. It sat propped upon his bedside table, hers the last face he looked upon before sleeping and the first upon rising.

  But there was no substitute for the genuine article. The opportunity to encounter Lady Katherine in the flesh had brought him here tonight. Apparently she had some affiliation as a volunteer for the Tremayne Dairy Farm Academy, the charitable recipient organization of that night’s ball. Reckoning that the dance card of a beauty, and a “professional” one at that, would be among the first to be filled, he’d taken up strategic position on the periphery of the dance floor.

  “That’s her over there.” Harry’s voice brought him back to the present. “Standing amidst the half-dozen penguins in Lord Dutton’s set. You can’t miss her.”

  Excitement gripped Rourke. He felt like a child on the eve of all those bountiful Christmases he’d heard of but never once known. Craning his neck, he scanned the ballroom, the muzzy figures melding into one glittering mass of jewels, plump bare shoulders, and swirling satins and silks. But the trouble with rich people was they tended to speak, move, and dress so very much alike.

  Exasperated, he turned back to his two friends. “Point her out to me.”

  Gavin spoke up, “It’s a society ball, Patrick, not Billingsgate Market. Pointing is not quite the thing.”

  Harry let out a huff. “Hang your pride and put your glasses on, man.”

  That was an easy enough recommendation for Harry to make. Handsome Harry, they’d called him back in their Roxbury House days, and with good reason. Blessed with height, blond good looks, and two working eyes, Harry had been coaxing girls out of their knickers before he was old enough to shave. Likewise, tall, dark, aristocratic Gavin had drawn his fair share of female admiration since they’d entered the ballroom. Barrel-chested, blunt-featured, and with a shock of auburn hair that no amount of Makassar oil could seem to tame, Rourke’s rough-hewn looks were less likely to recommend him to a delicate London lassie like Lady Katherine. Having a dodgy eye to boot hardly seemed fair, but certainly he wasn’t the only man in the room wearing glasses. He slid a gloved hand inside his tailcoat’s inner breast pocket and pulled out the detested spectacles. Shoving them on his crooked bridge of a broken nose, he leaned forward.

  Like an oyster opening to reveal the pearl sheltered within, the clutch of evening-attired “penguins” parted, bringing their prize into view. Lady Katherine Lindsey peered out from her sanctum and smothered a yawn behind her slender gloved hand.

  The first thing that struck him was how very tiny she was. Barely reaching the shoulders of the men ranged about her, she was also slight as a fairy. Following on that thought was that she was far prettier than her picture. Harry might be one of the best photographic portraitists in London, but the photograph he’d taken didn’t begin to do her justice. But then, how could an image imprinted on paper and tinted by hand begin to capture the creaminess of that pale oval face; the wicked, willful flas
h of those dark eyes; and the wonderful mobility of her lush mouth, berry ripe and fashioned for kissing? The only conceivable flaw he could find was her nose. Seen full face, it was thin about the bridge and slightly longish. An aristocrat’s nose, no doubt it tended to point north, and yet the delicate pinkish tip begged to be tweaked—and kissed.

  She must have sensed him staring. Shifting to the side, she cast her gaze over one gentleman’s shoulder and their eyes met. The jolt of sexual awareness struck like a thunderbolt splitting a placid springtime sky, the tingling heat sliding down his spine and settling in his cock. Suddenly glad of the concealing crush, he lifted his champagne flute in silent salute and then knocked back a sip. Warm as piss, just as he’d known it would be, and flat, too. Holding her eye, he choked down the froth and then made a deliberately droll face.

  The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly up-wards, affording him a flash of straight white teeth and two devilish dimples bracketing her bottom lip. As if remembering herself, she feigned a yawn and covered her hand over her mouth once more, only this time Rourke knew it wasn’t boredom she sought to smother. It was a chuckle.

  “I think she fancies you, mate.” Harry nudged him in the ribs, but Rourke ignored him, refusing to be distracted.

  Emboldened, he sent his gaze on a lazy downward glide, the shadowed hollow of her slender throat inviting mouths and tongues to linger. Her cream-colored gown was of obvious quality though simple in style, the décolletage low but not indecently so, just low enough to allow a teasing glimpse of cleavage. Elbow-high white satin opera gloves sheathed arms that were both slender and shapely.

  Imagining those lovely arms wrapping about his neck as he peeled away her gown, he asked, “What’s she like?”

  He sensed Harry shrug. “She has a reputation as a shrew, and honestly earned from what I hear, though she’s civil enough to me. Always keeps her pose without any fuss or fidgeting, though she’s not much of a talker. Brings her younger sister along to our sittings, no doubt to keep things on the up and up, not that she need bother.”

  Irrational jealousy caused Rourke to look away at last. He stole a sideways glance at the handsome photographer, but his friend’s attention was fixed not on Lady Katherine, but instead on a tall, curvy brunette sipping champagne and chatting to several goggle-eyed gentlemen on the far side of the room. Rourke recalled Harry earlier introducing her as Caledonia Rivers, not a PB, but one of his commissioned portraiture subjects, as well as a leader in the women’s suffrage movement.

  Harry scraped a gloved hand through his silver-blond hair and scowled. “She’s off-limits, Rourke.”

  Ordinarily Rourke’s tastes ran to buxom women with big breasts and long legs. His former mistress, Felicity, was as tall as he, as well as a proper armful. Striking though Miss Rivers was, his thoughts kept turning back to the pocket-sized Venus on the other side of the room.

  Happy to have his handsome friend’s interest elsewhere engaged, he clapped Harry on the shoulder. “Dinna fash, man. Bonny as your Miss Rivers is, I’ve set my cap elsewhere.”

  Setting his cap for Lady Katherine was but the first step in winning her. In his hard-scrabble experience, winning anything meant fighting for it. Whether he found himself in a London opera house, a pugilist’s ring, or a railway laborer’s hut sleeping three to a bed, jungle law prevailed.

  He divided his gaze between his two friends. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s a lady who’s promised me the next dance … only she doesna know it yet.”

  Gavin and Harry exchanged amused looks. Gavin’s dark brows rose. “Pardon me for asking, but since when do you dance?”

  It was a reasonable question. What little grace he possessed was centered in his nimble-fingered hands; otherwise, he’d been born with two left feet.

  Rourke grinned and handed Harry his champagne flute. “Since now.”

  Blood pumping as though he was once more ramping up to step into the ring, Rourke shouldered his way through the throng. From the pit, the orchestra struck up a waltz. He smiled. The dance had three features to recommend it to a tangle-toed clod such as him: it required moving in step with only one other person, its tempo was slow, and it afforded a man the chance to lay actual hands upon a woman in public without being slapped.

  Approaching his quarry, he ran his gaze over the competition, assessing his most likely point of entry. Of the six men assembled, he recognized two by name. The tall, lanky blond was Henry, Lord Dutton, and his porcine and prematurely balding young friend was Sir Cecil Wesley. The latter’s slouch betrayed him as the weak link.

  Aware of Lady Katherine watching him, Rourke summoned a sunny smile. “Good evening, gentlemen, milady. I trust there are no objections to my joining you?” Without awaiting an answer, he clapped Wesley on the shoulder. Fingers sinking into the young baronet’s sponginess, he moved him aside and stepped forward, thrusting himself dead center into the circle.

  He made Lady Katherine what he hoped was a serviceable bow. “Lady Katherine.” Straightening, he caught a whiff of her scent, orange blossoms and some other fresh but as yet unidentified fragrance that had him thinking of sunshine and balmy spring breezes. Ignoring his rivals’ furious faces, he honed his gaze on her coolly curious brown eyes. “I’ve come to claim my dance, milady.” I’ve come to claim you.

  For a few seconds, her aloof mask slipped, and he caught a flicker of surprise in her eyes, the pupils widening ever so slightly. She hesitated, glancing down at the arm he extended. “Yes, I do believe this dance is promised to you.”

  Lord Dutton scowled, his bottom lip protruding like a sulky child whose gingerbread was about to be taken away. “But how can that be? This is the first waltz of the evening.” He turned to Lady Katherine. “As I’m sure you will recollect, I bespoke this dance when I brought you your glass of punch.”

  Tiny though she was, she held her ground. “You are mistaken, sir.” She circumvented Dutton and came to Rourke, laying her small, gloved hand lightly atop his arm. “Gentlemen, if you will excuse us.” The latter was not spoken as a question.

  Chest swelling, Rourke led her away toward the dance floor, his triumph a trillion times more potent than snaffling a watch or pinching a purse. In this case he’d stolen something far more precious, a diamond of the first water, a pearl beyond price, straight out from under the toffee noses of his supposed betters.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, she leaned in and whispered, “I suppose I should thank you for rescuing me. Dutton and his set, ugh! What a lot of bloody bores.” She angled her face to his profile. “By the by, who the hell are you?”

  For a lady born, she certainly cursed a blue streak, not that he was one to mind. “Patrick O’Rourke, though my friends call me Rourke. Actually, my enemies call me Rourke, too, as well as do my business colleagues. Come to think of it, everyone does. I’m Scottish,” he added for no particular reason.

  “So I gathered from your burr.”

  He nodded, unsure of whether to feel complimented or put out. “The O in my surname confuses some. My father was Scots-Irish from Ulster, but my mother was Scots born and bred. Her people are in Cromartyshire. That’s in the far Highlands.” Jaysus, they hadn’t even reached the dance floor and already he was blathering like a dimwit.

  Lady Katherine sent him a cross look. “Yes, yes, I am well acquainted with the location of the Scottish counties. No doubt you surmise I am one of those silly females content to wallow in utter ignorance of geography, but I assure you, I possess both a globe and a map of the British Empire.”

  Her snappishness stunned him. He hadn’t pegged her as silly or ignorant. That she apparently consulted maps didn’t unduly surprise him. He opened his mouth to say as much, but instead something very different came out. “You don’t much care for people, do you?”

  She shrugged, which did interesting things to the creamy flesh edging out of her bodice. Small though she was, she wasn’t small everywhere. “I find people in general to be quite tolerable. It’s arrogance
and ill manners I cannot abide.”

  He opened his mouth to remark upon the questionable wisdom of pots calling kettles black, but by that time they’d reached the thronged dance floor. She let go of his arm. Lumbering behind her, Rourke’s broad shoulders clipped couples on either side. Clearing a space for them, he turned to take her in his arms. It was then that he was minded of the proverbial fly in the ointment.

  He couldn’t actually dance.

  She looked up at him and cleared her throat. “You did invite me to dance, did you not?”

  Sweat pricked Rourke’s brow, and his glasses fogged from heat, but this time he couldn’t blame the overabundance of people and lamps. His arms hung at his sides as if once more weighted with prison irons. “Aye, I did.”

  She let out a sigh as though suddenly weary. For a heart-stopping few seconds, he thought she might turn on her heel and walk away, leaving him to stand there alone, a buffoon, a laughingstock. Instead, she reached down, clasped one of her hands about his wrist, and carried it around to rest on the small of her slender back.

  “I won’t bite, I promise.” Under other circumstances, Rourke considered a well-placed nibble to be a most pleasing occurrence, but he held off on voicing such a naughty thought so soon and instead concentrated on his stiff legs and shuffling feet. “Place your other hand in mine—yes, the right hand, there’s the way. Now all we need do is to carry off some semblance of keeping time with the music. One-two-three, step in, step close. Mind how we are making a small circle?”

  Staring down at their toe-to-toe feet, her slipper-shod ones making his seem like elephant hooves, Rourke nodded. Her waist beneath his hand felt supple and impossibly small, the warmth from her silk-sheathed skin pouring into his palms.

  The lady’s scowl confirmed she was not pleased to find herself in the arms of an amateur. “Do try not to lift your feet quite so very high. We are not cantering, Mr. O’Rourke, we are dancing, or at least attempting to. The proper move is more of a glide than a step.”