Untamed (16 page)

Kate felt her stomach drop. Without rising to examine it, Kate more than knew. His reference to “winnings” was a dead giveaway.

“It is my father’s marker, I dare say.” Still, she waited for his reply, dread pinning her to the chair.

Rourke nodded. “Aye, it is. I happened upon the earl at one of his haunts in Leicester Square the other evening.”

Pinned no longer, Kate shot to her feet. “You lured him into deep play.”

He scoffed at the suggestion. “I hardly had to lure. He and his mate, Haversham, were already in over their heads. When I offered to stake your father for the evening, he willingly accepted. I didna have to offer a second time.”

Numb, she heard her voice as though it were an echo inside a tunnel. “How much?”

He turned his face up to look at her. “Five thousand pounds.”

Kate staggered back a step. Feeling the edge of the chair at the backs of her knees, she sank back down into her seat. Five thousand pounds was a small fortune. She scoured her brain for what he might possibly hope to collect from them in the way of recouping so large a sum. Apart from the estate, thankfully entailed, they’d no property. The town house was let, the carriage on its last spring, the two horses long past their pasture age, the silver and fine china long ago sold. She touched the pearl drop dangling from her left ear. Dear God, not Mama’s earrings. The matching pendant hung about Bea’s throat. The thought of giving up precious mementos pierced her heart.

She reached up to slide the backing of the earbob out of the hole in her lobe. “Take these until I can find the means to come up with the rest, only pray allow my sister to keep her necklace. It is all she has of our mother.”

He sent her an incredulous look. “What am I to do with a pair of earbobs?”

Her gaze honed in on his pierced ear, sporting a small ruby today to match his crimson cravat. Humble origins or not, he really was a most stylish man. “Wear them or sell them. Oh, I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “Keep your baubles, milady. The prize I’ve come to collect is dearer than those.”

“What is it you mean to collect?”

“You.”

“You want me as your mistress, then?” If he’d set out to humble her, to bring her low, he couldn’t have hit upon a better way.

Rising to stand, he shook his head. “I don’t need to buy a mistress, and if I did, I could set one up for far less than five thousand pounds.” His tone might have cut glass.

Kate stood, as well. “Then what do you want with me?”

“The same thing I wanted two years ago—marriage, children to inherit the legacy I’ve built, a hostess to preside over my dinner table.”

Kate shook her head. “But you can have those things with any woman.”

He speared her with a dagger-sharp look. “Not every woman is the daughter of an earl.”

So it was her blue blood he was after. The thought had crossed her mind two years before, but for whatever reason she’d set it aside.

Kate felt on the verge of throwing up her hands. His kissing capabilities aside, she’d no intention of marrying a man who plainly loathed her. “Mr. O’Rourke, we’ve been through this before. As deeply as I regret the circumstances of our last … parting, I cannot, and will not, make amends by marrying you.”

He shook his head. “You have a choice, milady. You can marry me or see your father hauled off to debtors’ prison. That would cause you and your sister quite a scandal, I should think.”

Kate felt as if invisible hands cinched about her throat, cutting off her breath. Chest heaving and head reeling, she regarded him, fighting for control, fighting for air.

She hauled up in front of him, hands fisted at her sides. “The first time I set eyes on you at Lady Stonevale’s ball, I thought you resembled a pirate. Now I see you don’t only look like a pirate. You
are
a pirate.”

He shrugged. “Aye, I am, just as you are a mean-spirited, sharp-tongued shrew. Given the defects in both our characters, I wouldna be surprised if we didn’t rub along well enough. Be that as it may, I will send word as soon as I have the special license. In the meantime, I advise you to begin packing what things you wish to bring with you.”

“Bring with me? Where am I going?”

“Why, home to Scotland, of course.”

“Scotland isn’t
my
home.”

“It is now.”

A throat being cleared had her whipping about. Her father stood on the threshold. By now she should know there would be no aid from that corner, and yet she so desperately wanted to believe. Thoughts ran through her head, ghosts of a little girl’s pleading.

This once, Papa, show yourself to be a better man. This once, let the bad news be a mistake, or at least not so very bad as it seems.

Instead, Kate rounded on him. “You lost me in a card game!”

He hung his head and nodded. “Essentially, that is so.”

“You staked me like … like chattel. Of all you’ve done, this deed puts you beyond the pale.”

He acknowledged Rourke with a nod and then crossed the room toward her, moving at a crawl as an old man might, though he couldn’t be much past fifty. “All will be well. These things have a way of righting themselves in the end.”

These things have a way of righting themselves in the end.
How often over the years had she heard that tired excuse?

“Mr. O’Rourke has agreed to pay off our debts and to settle a dowry on your sister. We can reopen the house at Romney, pay our creditors off, and even give Bea her come-out in grand style.”

Kate’s lower lip trembled. His lack of remorse was dispiriting at best, infuriating at worst. “And what of me, Papa, what shall I have?”

He drew up in front of her. She could smell last night’s spirits on his breath. “A wealthy husband who can give you a fine home and children is not to be lightly dismissed. You are not growing any younger, my dear.” He reached out a trembling hand to pat her shoulder, but she pulled back.

“Pray don’t add hypocrisy to your long list of sins by pretending for a moment that any of this has to do with me.”

She turned away in disgust. Her gaze alighted on Rourke. She’d expected to find him gloating. Instead he stood silently looking on, green eyes grave and mouth unsmiling.

“You’ve your revenge on me at last, sir. You must be mightily pleased with yourself.”

He didn’t answer. Something flickered in his eyes, pity perhaps? But no, such a villain must know nothing of pity or remorse, either.

She looked between the two men, hard-pressed to know which of them she hated more. Her father, she decided, for he was supposed to protect her. Mr. O’Rourke, on the other hand, had put forth his predatory claim in the most straightforward of ways. He had never pretended to be ought than the bounder he was. Not a bounder, but a pirate.

“Very well, Mr. O’Rourke, since you leave me no choice, I suppose I shall marry you.”

Later that evening, Kate sat on the edge of the settee, holding her head in her hands, looking glumly on as Bea paced the rose-patterned carpet and her father stood at the wine table by the window quaffing glass upon glass of port. Marrying a man who plainly loathed her and meant to make her miserable was a bitter pill to swallow, but there was no help for it. Rourke held her father’s marker, and, without the funds to redeem it, she could either marry him or see her father imprisoned, her baby sister left dowerless, and her family name forever besmirched.

Bea pivoted to their father. “I don’t mind the marrying part, but I don’t want Kate to go to Scotland. I need her here to coach me for my come-out.”

The earl turned away from the window and dealt his youngest a distracted pat. “Don’t fret, my dear. We’ll find you a sponsor, your Aunt Lavinia, perhaps.”

“Oh, Papa, not that old biddy, please! She’ll put me in hoops and feathers, and I shan’t have any fun at all.”

Kate couldn’t take much more. “Oh, have done, both of you. Bea, mark that I am present in the room, so you needn’t discuss me in the third person as though I was in Scotland already. And, Papa, while you’re pouring the better part of that decanter down your throat, pray spare a glass for me.”

Bea’s mouth formed a shocked circle. She cast Kate a scandalized look. “Kat, really! Ladies don’t drink port! Ratafia or sherry perhaps, and certainly champagne, but never port.”

“Ladies, little sister, do not find themselves sold like livestock or traded like horses.” As it turned out, she’d had no more say in her future “master” than had poor Princess.

Her father poured in silence, and Bea passed over the short-stemmed glass with a huff.

Ignoring them, Kate knocked back the port in a single swallow, then coughed, throat ablaze. Really, how did her father manage to drink as he did day after day? She thought the sensitive skin inside her mouth must be peeling and a hole burned at the back of her tongue.

Bea drew up toward her. Her gaze dropped to the empty glass in Kate’s hand and then snapped up to her face as though expecting a Jekyll-Hyde transformation to take place at any time. “You’re supposed to sip it, aren’t you?”

Kate shook her head. Now that the fire was dying, she felt a mellow acceptance taking hold.

“Not if you mean to get drunk, you don’t.” Kate held out her empty glass. “Hit me again.”

Rourke was sitting down to breakfast in his Hanover Square town house the next morning when the sound of a throat being cleared called his attention to the half-cocked door. He looked up from the buttered kippers he’d been pushing about his plate. Ordinarily he brought a hearty appetite to the breakfast table, to any table, but leaving Kate near tears the night before seemed to have set him off his food.

Ralph Sylvester, his “butler” and former flash-house friend, poked his sandy blond head inside. “May I,
sir?”
Rourke beckoned the former-felon-turned-respectable-butler inside.

Coming up on the table, Ralph presented the usual precisely folded and still-warm copy of the
London Times.
“It came late today, but it’s hot off the presses and fresh off the iron just as you fancy it—
sir.”

“Thank you.” Rourke added it to the stack of newspapers at his elbow, which he’d as yet to give so much as a glance.

As no one was about, Ralph helped himself to a cup of coffee and pulled up a chair. “I have something else for you, a wee wedding giftie, as you might say.” He slid a brown-paper-wrapped parcel across the cloth-covered table.

Among his many talents, Ralph Sylvester was a first-rate mimic, which was why he’d been so invaluable to Johnnie Black. He could affect just about any accent, including that of a plum-in-the-mouth English butler. The kicker was, he really was a crack butler and a marvel of a valet. Rourke hadn’t read an unironed newspaper or put on a wrinkled shirt since taking his old friend into his employ.

Rourke pushed his plate away and reached for the parcel, lifting it to assess its weight. The novelty came from growing up without ever receiving a single present, no doubt, but for whatever reason wrapped parcels always made him feel like he imagined a child must feel on Christmas morning.

“What do you suppose this is?” He held the package up to his ear to see if it rattled.

Ralph sipped his coffee with a casual air. “I’m certain I couldn’t say,
sir.
Perhaps you might contemplate opening it?”