Hope Tarr

by Untamed

  Her little sister’s superior attitude in the realm of love was akin to salting a fresh, sensitive wound. Kate snapped back, “I wonder how closely your and Mr. Sylvester’s souls would align a year hence when you hadn’t the funds for train fare, let alone the fripperies you favor.”

  It was a snappish, shrewish thing to have said, and Kate regretted it as soon as the sharp words were out. That she’d lashed out at all demonstrated just how on edge Felicity’s presence had made her.

  Bea’s head swung away from the horse to Kate. Her bottom lip trembled. A tear splashed her cheek.

  Kate reached out to put her arm about her sister. “Bea, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  Shaking her head, Bea backed away. “That was a horrid thing to say. I think you are a horrid, horrid shrew.” She turned and ran toward the castle.

  I think you are a horrid, horrid shrew.

  Her sister’s words ringing again and again in her ears, Kate headed back to the castle. She’d made a hash of explaining things to Bea, but she still couldn’t stand back and allow her little sister to disport herself with the valet. At Bea’s tender age, she had her whole future ahead of her. Kate meant to do all she could to protect her from being compromised or, God forbid, ruined.

  Once inside the great hall, redolent with the smell of pine and gaily decorated for the season, she didn’t bother taking off her coat. She directed her stomping footsteps to her husband’s library. It was her second visit of the day, a record.

  The library door stood open. Since it was, she didn’t bother with knocking. Rourke looked sharply up from the map of railway lines he had spread out over his desk. Standing behind, big hands braced on the desk’s edge, he looked almost relieved to see her.

  “What can I do for you, Kate?”

  His tone held no trace of the earlier annoyance. No matter. Kate was annoyed enough for them both.

  “You can take Mr. Sylvester aside and give him a stern talking to.” Belatedly she considered she might have sounded rather peremptory.

  He straightened to full standing. “Why is that?”

  “He is dallying with my sister.”

  She’d expected him to be outraged. He glanced to the map on his desk as if eager to return to it. “That sounds like a private matter for the two of them to sort out. Betimes, she only just arrived the other day. How much dallying could they possibly have done in only twenty-four hours?”

  “Not they, him, and the answer is more than enough. I overheard him offering to teach her to ride.”

  “Shocking, I’m sure.” He rolled his eyes as though she was a silly woman wasting his workday.

  Kate felt her annoyance ratchet up. A mere hour ago he had dressed her down for not coming to him with her problems, and now that she had, she found herself met with sarcasm and indifference.

  Feeling the need to reach for her alter ego, Capable Kate, once more she crossed her arms in front of her. “He’s in your employ. It falls to you to speak with him before matters … progress. Will you do so or not?” She tapped her foot to indicate that she awaited his answer and that her time was as valuable as his.

  “Verra well.” He sighed as though put upon, indeed. “I will speak to him tonight, but if you ask me, the chit would count herself lucky to land him.”

  “I didn’t ask you, in point, but since you bring it up, the man is your valet.”

  He glanced sharply up. “Aye, he is. What of it?”

  “He is a servant in this household.”

  “As is Hattie, and yet you treat her more as a family relation than a servant.”

  She uncrossed her arms, wondering why he must be so very difficult about this. She knew he and the valet were friendly, but good Lord. “I’m not marrying Hattie off to my sibling.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Valet or housekeeper, either is honest work, is it not? Had circumstances worked out differently, I might have found myself shining your boots and carrying your bathwater to your room in tin cans.”

  “You are being ridiculous.”

  “Am I? Mark that Beatrice wouldna be the only Lindsey sister to marry beneath her, milady.”

  Suddenly Kate understood why he was being so very difficult—and becoming so very angry. She did her best to backpedal. “Your case is different.”

  His eyes darkened to a cloudy greenish gray, more London fog than clear-cut emerald. “Why? Because I am rich?”

  Kate didn’t have an answer for that, but she fumbled for one anyway. “Rourke—Patrick—I didn’t mean—”

  “You had the right of it the first time. A lady to the manor born such as you should know better than to become overfamiliar with her minions, let alone say vows with them.”

  The coldness in his eye and voice had her trembling. “What are you saying?”

  “That I can think of far better ways to spend my life than leg-shackled to a woman with too much spleen and too little heart, a toffee-nosed, sharp-tongued … shrew.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Nay then, do what thou canst, I will not go today, No, nor tomorrow, not till I please myself. The door is open, sir, there lies your way.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Kate, The Taming of the Shrew

  A Week Later

  ate had ended the argument by fleeing the library before tears might break. A week later, she’d yet to enter it. Likewise she and Rourke each kept to their own rooms at night. The adjoining dressing-room door was closed once more as if the battle line.

  With a house, or rather a castle, full of holiday guests, she didn’t have the luxury of moping. Rourke’s friends Hadrian and Gavin, with their wives, Callie and Daisy, had arrived the day before. By unspoken consent, she and Rourke had agreed to put on their game faces for their guests. Fortunately the presence of guests meant their paths crossed even less than usual. In the tradition of country-house parties, many of the activities segregated the sexes. In honor of Gavin’s birthday, Rourke had taken him and Hadrian into town, and the womenfolk had begged off in favor of entertaining themselves.

  Taking tea in the parlor Kate had redecorated in pale hues of blue and cream, she looked between her two guests. Callie, of course, was a renowned suffragist, and Gavin’s wife, Daisy, was a top actress. A famous social reformer and a star of the London stage made for august company. Kate had never before lacked for confidence, but being in the position of entertaining two such remarkable women for an afternoon was a trifle daunting—especially when matters between she and her husband had clearly gone awry.

  Settled into a chair by the lamp table perusing a week-old copy of the London Times, Callie peered at them over the top of her glasses. Out of the blue, she said, “Rourke is a bit rough about the edges, but he’s a good man, Katherine. The botched-wedding business aside, I believe he loves you with all his heart.”

  Seated on the settee next to Kate, Daisy piped up, “To quote Shakespeare, the course of true love never did run smooth.”

  Kate frowned. Apparently hers and Rourke’s game faces left something to be desired. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I’ve had rather enough of the Bard’s dubious wisdom.”

  Daisy’s saucy smile turned sheepish. She dropped her gaze to the script in her lap. “I expect you found out about Gavin’s and my … wedding gift.”

  Kate nodded. “I expect so.”

  Daisy plucked at her gown’s striped skirt. She’d begun her career as a cancan dancer in the music halls of Monmartre, and sometimes she seemed to have difficulty sitting still.

  “Oh, dear, and now you must think ill of me, and just when I had such high hopes we might be friends. I didn’t mean to meddle … Well I did mean to, but only a little and only to help. It seems another of my grand schemes has backfired yet again. At any rate, please don’t blame Gav. It was all my idea, truly. He tried to dissuade me, but in the end I had my way, and he posted the bloody play for me.”

  Having observed the lively actress and her darkly handsome, if sober-eyed barrister husband since their arrival, Kate e
xpected that Daisy’s having her way was not at all an unusual state of affairs. It was blatantly obvious to any onlooker that Gavin was besotted with his unconventional bride. Equally obvious was that she was every whit as besotted with him.

  Likewise, Callie and Hadrian were passionately devoted to one another. Since Callie’s retirement from politics, they’d commenced a new project together: a photographic exposé of the plight of London’s East Enders, many of whom endured horrific poverty. Being in the midst of not one, but two such extraordinary couples was taking its toll. Kate felt a little envious, but in the main she felt wistful.

  For whatever reason, she suddenly found herself confessing, “I’d promised myself I wouldn’t bring this up until after Gavin’s birthday dinner, but the fact is, I am considering asking Patrick for a deed of separation.”

  It was the truth. She’d gone ’round and ’round in her head, and she could see no other way. She refused to live out her days with a man who viewed her as a leg-shackle, a shrew.

  Nor would she share him with another woman. A sham marriage was worse than no marriage at all. Rourke had yet to own up to his and Felicity’s “prior” relationship. If that was all in the past, what had he to hide?

  Expression horrified, Daisy slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, dear, you and Rourke are parting ways, and it’s my bloody fault.”

  Kate reached over and touched her arm to reassure her. Though it wasn’t in her nature to be physically demonstrative with strangers, she found herself feeling very much at home with these women. “You mustn’t blame yourself. Tempted as I might be to shift the blame for my problems onto others’ shoulders, I cannot. Even were I so inclined, I can hardly pin the demise of our marriage on a play.”

  Callie folded the newspaper and set it aside. “Dearest Katherine, once not so very long ago, you gave me some good advice, albeit in the loo of all places. Do you recall it?”

  Kate thought for a moment and then the memory returned, hazy but intact. “In the main, it had to do with not minding a single cruel word certain, er, bitches said, I do believe.”

  “Precisely, and now I should like to return the favor, if I may? By way of an example, Hadrian and I met when a political enemy bribed him to discredit me by taking an embarrassing photograph and leaking it to the press.”

  Kate recalled the very revealing boudoir photograph that had appeared on the front page of every London newspaper the year before, though she hadn’t known the story behind its leak to Fleet Street. Now that she did, she wondered aloud how Callie could ever bring herself to forgive him.

  Callie’s answering smile was as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s. “I could forgive him because I loved him, and by the extreme actions he undertook to mend matters, I knew beyond a shadow of doubting that he loved me.”

  “But even so—”

  “My dear Kate, circumstances—and people—are rarely what they seem on the surface. Love, however, deals not with the surface, but with the essence. It is as honest as it is eternal.”

  Fighting the lump building in her throat, Kate turned to Daisy. Kate recalled Rourke mentioning that the plucky actress hadn’t been orphaned, but abandoned at birth.

  “To pick up on Callie’s point, I am a prime example of someone who is not precisely as she seems. I wasn’t always a respectable stage actress, you know.”

  Kate nodded. She’d heard something vague about Daisy’s reappearance in London as the leading act at the Palace supper club, the variety saloon Rourke now owned; otherwise, he’d been sketchy on details, and Kate hadn’t wanted to pry.

  “I began my stage career as a burlesque performer in Paris music halls. Beyond that, to say my personal reputation was tarnished would be generous. While some of the gossip was exaggerated, I will tell you frankly that for the most part, I earned every salacious snippet. My daughter, Freddie, isn’t Gavin’s natural child, but rather the offspring of a brief liaison when I was very young and very foolish. I had lovers before Gavin and I met again by chance, and by lovers I don’t just mean a few. Once Gavin came back into my life, I was so afraid to let myself love him that I did everything I could think of to push him away. When he came upon a letter I was penning to Freddie and assumed she was a ’he’ and my lover, I let him go on thinking so. And then later when his grandfather attempted to come between us, I let him think I’d accepted his bribe to walk away. That all seems madness now, it was madness, but at the time I was so very afraid of getting hurt again I couldn’t see straight. Unfortunately, I didn’t only hurt myself. I hurt Gavin. For the most part, Gavin was very patient with me. He still is. He forgave me not one outlandish lie, but two. Had I been in his place, I am not certain I could have been so forgiving or so generous with my love. Still, if it weren’t for Harry and Rourke and Callie abducting me from Drury Lane and taking me to that abandoned theatre where Gavin awaited, Lord only knows if Gavin and I would have ever managed to sort out our mess or our feelings.”

  Callie crossed the room and claimed the seat cushion on Kate’s other side. To Daisy, she said, “I rather think you would have sorted it all out, though not perhaps in such good time, and by the by, I love that you’ve let your hair go back to your natural blond.”

  The conversation veered off to hairstyles and fashions, children and work and future plans. Kate considered what she’d so far heard. Salacious boudoir photographs, bribery and blackmail, abduction! She would have been hard-pressed to say which woman’s story was the more extraordinary. And yet to the world’s eyes, Callie and Hadrian and Daisy and Gavin appeared as two perfectly serene, perfectly respectable newly married pairs. But as her and Rourke’s stormy union showed, who was to say what went on behind the scenes in any relationship?

  As if sensing her withdrawal, Callie touched her shoulder. “The two of us have done quite a bit of talking. It occurs to me that it’s Katherine’s turn.” She turned to Kate. “I don’t mean to pry, but if there’s anything you wish to get off your chest, I’m sure I can speak for Daisy when I say we will listen with an open mind.”

  Kate divided her gaze between the two women. “Though I don’t know either of you well, in many ways, I feel more comfortable talking with you than I would to my sister or …”

  She stopped there, unhappily aware that other than Rourke, she didn’t have close companions in whom she might confide. Along with the extended novel reading and chocolate-cake eating, acquiring a set of female friends had been part of her plan for spinsterhood independence. She saw now how silly she’d been to limit her life as she had. Her isolation wasn’t a state of affairs she could blame on either her father’s gaming or her little sister’s selfishness. It was no one’s fault but hers.

  “Then what is it, Katherine?”

  “Rourke is your friend.” Singling in on Daisy, Kate added, “In your case, you grew up together. I don’t want to seem as though I’m criticizing him or otherwise speaking ill of him but… Oh, Lord, it hurts. It hurts so bloody much.”

  Embarrassed by her outburst, Kate turned away and dashed at a tear sliding down the side of her cheek. To think she’d always prided herself on her stiff upper lip, game face, and perfect record of never once showing emotion, let alone crying in public. Precisely when had she turned into a watering pot?

  By the time she finished confiding hers and Rourke’s as yet unfinished story, the pot of tea with which they began the afternoon had been set aside in favor of a decanter of sherry, and there wasn’t a dry eye among them. When she came to the part to do with Felicity, she choked up.

  Callie waved the decanter aside. “I’m afraid I shall have to make do with tea until little Henry or Alicia makes his or her appearance.” She smoothed a hand over the slight baby bump at her belly, and Kate found herself swallowing against a building thickness in her throat.

  She was reasonably certain she hadn’t conceived. The slight cramping in her lower belly and tenderness in her breasts indicated her monthly courses were due to arrive on schedule. Given their imminent separation, she should
be relieved. Who knew, but perhaps she was barren. She was closing in on thirty, after all.

  But the truth was, she desperately wanted a small human being to cuddle and care for, someone who would be truly hers to love. How ironic that she who had been taking care of others nearly all her life might be deprived of the gift of motherhood. Beyond creating a life, she wanted to create a family—a family with Patrick.

  But accomplishing that aim required him to love her just enough, just a little.

  The sound of a carriage pulling up out front announced that the men were returned. At Callie and Daisy’s encouragement,

  Kate went off to speak with Rourke. As Daisy pointed out, there really was no time like the present. Birthday dinner or not, there was no point in allowing wounded feelings to fester any longer.

  Watching Kate go off, Daisy let out a sigh. “Oh, I do hope they work it out.”

  Callie hedged a dark brow upward. “I was under the impression you weren’t overly fond of Kate.”

  “I had my doubts at first,” Daisy admitted. “She seemed so very plumb in the mouth and well, just a bit tight-arsed.”

  Callie smiled at that. “You might have said much the same of me had you met me a few years ago.”

  Rather than deny it, Daisy said, “They’re meant to be together, I just know it. The way he looks at her when he thinks she doesn’t see, the longing in his eyes, well, it fair near breaks my heart.” Despite her years in Paris, Daisy’s Cockney roots had a tendency to show.

  “What do you make of Felicity?” Callie asked. “I thought she seemed rather full of herself at dinner last night with all that talk of her theatrical career.”

  Never one to hold back, Daisy scowled and said, “Actress, my arse. I’ve certainly never heard of her. I think she’s scheming jade, a fortune huntress out to stir the pot and make trouble for our friends.”

  “Hmm, well put. But the principal question is, what does she want?” Callie thought for a moment. “Don’t you find it odd that after two years in London she suddenly befriends Kate’s sister and turns up here before the holiday?” Daisy agreed it was odd, indeed. “Let’s you and I keep a watch on her while we’re all here and see what she might be up to.” She lifted a corn-colored lock of her long hair, formerly dyed a stage girl’s cinnamon, and added, “Present difficulties aside, Rourke and Kate are on the cusp of their own happy ending. I can feel it. We can’t allow that flame-haired vixen to spoil all our hard work now.”