by Untamed
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.
Rourke awoke with a start, nearly tipping over in his chair. He’d been dreaming of Kate, but then that was nothing new. That night’s dream, however, seemed different somehow, achingly vivid. Even awake, the memory stuck with him. Mad though it was, he could almost believe she’d stood there in the study with him. He’d always thought hallucinations to be tricks of the mind that affected the sight, and yet he swore he detected the orange blossom scent of her hair.
But given the breakneck pace she kept up by day, his bride would have retired to bed long ago. Kate must be the most industrious woman Rourke had ever known. Catching her alone during the day was proving all but impossible. The woman operated like a factory machine, her slender hands always engaged in some busy, worthwhile task. In a little over a week, she’d transformed his castle from a ramshackle ruin to a gracious home, winning over his servants and tenants and neighbors alike. So much for the spoiled, selfish termagant he supposed he’d married. Whether patiently repeating a new receipt to his hard-of-hearing cook, delivering a basket of food to a bedridden tenant, or overseeing the concoction of an herbal remedy to ease his elderly neighbor’s gout, Kate was the most giving, least selfish person he’d ever encountered. Her scolding tongue she seemed to reserve for him alone, though their bouts of bantering were more amusing than annoying.
His gaze fell to the play lying on his blotter. The odd thing was, he had no recollection of closing it. He must have done so in his sleep. Once again he’d fallen asleep reading, or rather rereading it, searching the paragraphs of prose for suggestions or even clues on how to go about wooing his lady wife. Unfortunately, in the play, Petruchio’s seduction and the shrew’s surrender occurred offstage. Nor did Master Shakespeare trouble himself to explain how the fictional Kate came to be a shrew in the first place.
When it came to the real-life Kate, Rourke fancied he had that part figured out. Seeing her as a person and not a conquest, he more than suspected her caustic comments and flashes of temper weren’t really shrewishness as much as they were the defenses of a lonely and vulnerable woman. When the other day she’d let slip that her father and sister called her Capable Kate, Rourke had glimpsed the hurt beneath the pride she affected. Thinking of it now, he felt a rush of guilt when he considered that perhaps he wasn’t so very different from her feckless father or spoiled sister or the London swells who’d pursued her. Like them, he’d used her, in his case to further his social ambitions and bolster his pride. Small wonder she wanted him nowhere near her at night. Ever since she’d moved into the adjoining room, he’d slept with one ear cocked, but so far he’d not heard one wee tap upon that connecting door.
Rourke rose to round the desk. Crossing the carpet to the first of several bookshelves, he shoved the copy Daisy and Gavin had given him on the shelf beside its mate. He wanted his bride in his bed, but more than that, he wanted her in his life.
Until now he’d convinced himself that taming her was a sort of rehabilitation on par with the transformation he and his fellow orphans had undergone at Roxbury House. Casting his efforts in that noble light, changing her had seemed as much for her good as his. Once she left off her wildness and settled down to her duty, they could be happy, he knew it. But for the first time since he’d whisked her out of the churchyard and onto the train, he doubted the purity of his motives. He’d stalked her like quarry and then trapped her into a marriage she’d made it clear from the very beginning she didn’t desire. Kate’s happiness had never been his primary consideration. Until now he hadn’t considered it—or her—at all.
Now that he did, he found he no longer cared about taming her. To change one thing about Kate struck him as the height of hubris. But he still meant to win her.
And for that, the play was most definitely not the thing.
The next morning Kate sailed inside the breakfast room, looking so fresh and pretty in a new habit of hunter green that Rourke felt his heart lifting at the sight of her. “Out for a ride, are we?”
“I can’t speak for we, but that is certainly my intention.” She picked up a china plate from the sideboard and set about filling it, scarcely sparing him a glance. When she sat down beside him, he fancied a chill wind had entered the room.
He reached out to lightly touch her arm. “Shall I come with you?”
She jerked away as though he’d touched her with a hot brazier rather than his bare hand. “No.” Beneath the short filmy veil of her riding hat, she glowered at him. “And I’ll thank you not to paw me at table.”
Her scornfulness took him back to that day almost two years ago when he’d taken her riding in Hyde Park. She’d accused him of pawing her then, too. Had they really lost so much ground overnight?
Just the other day he’d taken her on a tour of his stables, and he’d proudly pointed out all his stock, including Zeus, his prize Arabian. Rourke had a trainer coming in from Derby. Until the man arrived, the horse wasn’t to be so much as touched by anyone other than himself or the stable manager. Kate had glanced at the beast stomping in his stall and declared she would be quite content to ride Buttercup or a similarly docile mount.
She must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Either that or it must be her woman’s time of month. He was as yet hardly in a position to know. When he’d come to bed late last night, he’d actually considered knocking on the connecting door. But setting his ear to the panel, he hadn’t heard so much as a peep coming from her room.
His dog lumbered over to her. Crooning sweet nothings, Kate reached down and scratched the beast’s ears. Watching the slow, gentle movements of her fingers, fingers he’d yet to feel on his bare skin, Rourke owned that he was jealous, actually jealous, of a dog.
She set her plate down on the floor and pushed back her chair to rise. “I’ll be off, then.”
Rourke started up. “Are you certain you don’t want company?”
She hesitated and then lanced him a look, their aristocratic look, that straight-through look that said he was invisible to the likes of her. And then she sniffed, their sniff, as if to indicate he was dirty or certainly not as sweet-smelling as she. Finally she lifted one side of her mouth in a sneer—their sneer—the twisted smile telling him that no matter how much money he made, he would never be worthy. And then she cut him, cut him like a prized diamond slicing th
rough common glass.
“Quite certain I don’t want yours.”
His own wife had given him the Cut Direct.
Stunned, Rourke wandered into his study to work, but instead found himself staring blindly at the ledger. The rows and columns of numbers might as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the meaning they held. All his life, he’d had a gift for ciphering, but now he couldn’t say for sure that one and one still equaled two.
It was no use. He slammed the ledger closed and mentally reviewed the bizarre breakfast episode once more in his head. Kate’s waspishness reminded of the time when, as a boy at Roxbury House, he’d let Harry and Gavin goad him into poking at the wasps’ nest with his shoe. Like opening his heart to Kate, it had seemed a good idea at the time, but in the end he’d gotten badly stung.
He’d thought they were becoming close, or certainly closer. Over the past weeks, their verbal sparring had become more thinly veiled flirtations than declarations of war. A current of unchecked desire undercut their every gesture, glance, and touch. Like the explosive fuses he’d once set to carve railway tunnels from sheets of solid rock, it would be only a matter of time before one or both of them imploded. There was no help for it. Whether she was wooed or not, Rourke was going to have to bed his wife.
When the knock sounded outside his study door, he was grateful for the intrusion. Though he should hold his gratitude in reserve, the thought occurred to him it might be Kate.
“Come in.”
The door opened, revealing not his wife but Hamish Campbell, his stable manager. Tamping down his disappointment, Rourke beckoned the servant inside. Hamish doffed his tweed cap and made a study of the tops of his boots.
Impatient, Rourke prompted, “What can I do for you, Hamish?”
Hamish lifted anguished eyes from the cap he twisted between his hands. “I don’t rightly know, Mr. O’Rourke. I’m not so certain I should have come.”
“My door is always open, you know that. Now tell me, what is the trouble?”
Hamish blew out a breath. “Coming between a man and his wife, carrying tales, well, it’s not ordinarily my way, sir. You know that.”
His heart kicking into a canter, Rourke said, “Out with it, man.”
“It’s your lady, sir. She marched herself out to the stable a short while ago and asked that Zeus be saddled for her. I tried telling her your orders are that no one is to go near Zeus without your permission but … well, she wouldn’t hear of it. Saddled the beast herself and took off like cannon shot.”
Fear fisted Rourke in the gut. The horse showed great promise, but for the time being he was a wilding. He had kicked his way out of his stall and jumped the paddock fence to freedom a good half-dozen times.
“You did the right thing in coming to me.” Rourke was already on his feet, rounding the desk and halfway to the door. “How long ago did she leave?”
“Ten minutes, give or take.”
Rourke considered reprimanding him for waiting that long, only he hadn’t the time to spare. Kate already had ten minutes’ lead on him, assuming she’d managed to keep her seat. If not, she might be lying on the ground injured or worse. It was the prospect of what counted as “worse” that had his pulse pumping and his heart threatening to hammer a hole in his chest.
His hand found the doorknob. The brass slipped in his slick grasp. One foot out into the hallway, he didn’t bother with looking back. “Have my horse saddled at once.”
When I get my hands on you, Kate …
He left the thought unfinished, the alternative too frightening to bear.
Sod off, Rourke.
Kate pressed her knees into the stallion’s sides, and the animal took off through the open barn door. She crouched low and hugged the horse with her knees. Her hat whipped off, and rather than worry about it, she gloried in the fingers of wind raking her hair and the tepid winter sunshine on her face. The paddock, carriage house, and several other dependency buildings whizzed by on either side of her head. A fallow field lay to her left. To her right was the drive leading past the gatehouse and out to the main road.
She turned the horse toward the field. The low fence would be an easy jump, and beyond it the terrain was flat. From the estate map she’d glimpsed in Rourke’s study, she could ride for several leagues and encounter nary a hill. With any luck, Zeus would exhaust himself eventually and let her lead.
“Kate. Kate!”
A man’s shout sounded from behind. She didn’t have to look back to know who it was. Rourke.
“Halt, Kate. I said halt.”
By now Kate considered she’d more than proved her point. She would have been only too happy to end her husband’s object lesson then and there, only the stallion clearly had other ideas. He headed for the road at a fast gallop.
Fear struck her, replacing the wild exhilaration she’d known but a few seconds before. The main road was no place for a wild horse. Carriages, hedgerows, and other riders all presented likely risks. She brought the reins up hard, hating to hurt the animal’s sensitive gums, but having no choice if she wanted to rein him in. Zeus let out a screech and reared, forelegs leaving the ground and thrashing at air. Kate’s world upended. For a dizzying few seconds, her gaze met with the sky, her foot slipping from the stirrup.
The animal righted itself. Amidst the stomach-pitching motion, somehow she managed to keep her seat, holding on with her legs. The episode would give her bragging rights for life, provided she didn’t end the morning with a broken neck.
“Kate!”
Rourke was beside her, his bay running neck and neck with Zeus, the animals’ exhaled breaths forming twin frost clouds. Kate risked a quick sideways glance at her husband. Sweat streaked the side of his face from forehead to jowl, dripping into his shirt stock, already banded by a wet ring.
“Rein in before you break your bloody neck or I’m minded to break it for you.”
“I’m trying!” She said so at a scream, but she didn’t think he’d heard her.
A hedgerow rose up faster than she’d judged. Rourke snapped out an arm and caught her reins in a fist with his and yanked hard. Reaching over, he slapped her hands onto her saddle pommel. “Hold on!”
Kate was trying. Zeus, though more than half-wild, slowed to match the bay’s gait. Several more circuits about the field were required to slow the horses to less than a full gallop. The next thing she knew, Rourke’s arm wrapped about her waist, pulling her off the stallion and onto the saddle in front of him. Seconds later, Zeus tore off.
Hamish Campbell slipped under the fence and ran over to them. “Are you all right, missus?”
It took Kate a full minute to be sure. “I … Yes, I think so. But the horse …”
She looked off to the dust clouds rising up from the lane and felt her heart sink. A horse run amok was not only a danger to himself but to others. She’d never meant for anyone to get hurt, man or beast.
The stable manager took off his cap and ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Several of the lads have gone off after him. Dinna worry, like as not we’ll get him back eventually.”
Rourke’s voice was a hard hiss in her ear, his arm about her waist a vise that permitted no escape. “Were I you, Katie, I’d save my worrying for myself.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Though little fire grows great with little wind, Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all. So I to her, and so she yields to me, For I am rough and woo not like a babe.”
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, PETRUCHIO, The Taming of the Shrew
hat afternoon Kate stepped out of the hip bath and wrapped the towel around her. The long, hot soak had proved just the thing for sore muscles. If only a bruised heart might be as easily remedied.
The dressing-room door flew open, crashing against the wall. Rourke stood in the portal, the breadth of his shoulders filling the frame. Kate wasn’t all that surprised to see him. He’d been stomping about his bedroom ever since they’d gotten back to the castle and parted ways at
the top of the stairs.
She held her chin high and kept a firm grip on the towel. She might be dripping wet, but he looked wild, indeed. His rumpled white shirt hung open to the navel as though he’d been in the process of taking it off and then changed his mind. Her gaze fixed on the queue of reddish brown hair leading downward to his trouser waistband, and her lower belly thrummed.
He braced a hand on the door frame and raked her with his gaze. She was keenly aware of the bathwater pearling on her skin, her nipples firming to hard points beneath the towel, and that her legs were bare from the knees down. And suddenly the room, large as it was, didn’t seem to contain nearly enough air.
“You might have knocked.”
He snorted, bringing to mind the stallion. Both were arrogant beasts used to having their way with females. “Aye, I might have, only I’m no feeling so verra civil toward you at the moment.” He shoved away from the door and stalked over to her. “You might have obeyed me, Kate. Your disobedience caused the loss of a valuable animal and put those who must go after him at risk. Beyond that, you made me seem a laughingstock in front of my own men. No one respects a man who canna control his own wife.” He drew up beside her, so close that for a moment Kate thought she might fall backward into the bath.
Kate shrugged, sending the towel slipping. “I suppose you chose the wrong wife, then.”