Untamed (22 page)

After the impromptu kiss, Kate hadn’t stayed to test Rourke’s promise to leave her alone for the night. She grabbed her candle and dashed from the dining room in search of a bed. Surely in a castle this size, if she kept opening doors, sooner or later she would come upon a suitably equipped bedroom.

At some point the dog, Toby, joined her. Like his master, he had a full stomach and apparently nothing better to do than plague her. After opening more doors, including closets, than she cared to count, she found a cubby-sized room. Like the other rooms she’d so far peeked into, the bed was stripped of both linens and mattress, but there was at least a heavy, carved chest in the corner. Holding her candle aloft, she checked the ceiling. Aside from one cobweb in the opposite corner, she didn’t see any evidence of spiders. And the door had a latch.

Encouraged, she crossed the room. She stuck the stub of candle into an empty candlestick holder and then knelt to open the chest. The lid was heavy. She had to use both hands. She heaved it up on screeching hinges, sending dust clouds flying. Eyes watering, she rifled inside. She pulled out a heavy tapestry coverlet that had seen better days and a smaller, lighter blanket. She dragged the coverlet over to the fireplace and laid it out, then rolled the blanket to serve as a pillow. A squeak drew her attention to the door, as yet unlocked. The dog nosed his way inside and lumbered over to her. She tried leading him out by the collar, but he stiffened his legs and stood his ground. Kate was too tired to argue.

“All right, you can stay, only not in my bed, such as it is. You can sleep in that corner.” She pointed him to the corner without the web.

Tail thumping, he stared up at her with liquid brown eyes and stretched out on the coverlet anyway.

Kate sighed. She crossed to the door and slid the rusty bolt in place.

When I decide to claim my husbandly rights, no wee lock shall keep me from you.

Shivering, she lightly touched fingertips to her lips and returned to her makeshift bed. The coal bin was near empty. She scrounged the last few bricks and made a piddling fire, which the dog seemed to appreciate. He rolled onto his back and poked all four paws up in the air, displaying a white ruff and speckled belly to go with his otherwise brindled fur.

“You really are a mongrel, aren’t you?”

Kate gave the belly a gingerly pat and then tried nudging him over to the side, again without success. For a woman used to being in charge, she wasn’t having much luck being listened to today. She sat down on the vacant patch of the coverlet not covered in dog and held her hands out to the heat. Pins and needles pricked her numb fingers back to life, but her nails were still alarmingly blue.

What if I died here?

Setting aside her remaining shoe along with that morbid thought, she stretched out on her side.
Ah, lovely.
The floor beneath her was cold as a marble tomb and just as hard, but the dog at her back was warm and pliant, if somewhat stinky. So, she supposed, was she. Even if her accommodations left something to be desired, she’d never before taken such pure pleasure in lying her body down for the night. She curled into a comforting ball, tucked her hands beneath her head, and focused on going to sleep.

But with her eyes closed, the bizarre wedding day played again and again in her mind. How fortunate that she hadn’t any preconceived notions, romantic or otherwise. Most women of her acquaintance expected their weddings to be … well, beautiful. Thinking back on the farcical nuptials and the aborted wedding breakfast, she couldn’t imagine anything less beautiful. Tired as she was, she felt a sob building at the back of her throat. She rolled onto her back, the tears sliding from her temples and melting into her hairline.

The ruckus had her rocketing upright, the dog with her. The would-be musician with a string instrument stood in the hallway just outside her door. It was Rourke, of course, strumming the score to what vaguely resembled “Greensleeves” and singing the lyrics at the top of his lungs. Kate dragged a hand through her tangled hair and dried her eyes on her crusty sleeve. It seemed her wedding-day torments had yet to end. Along with freezing and starving her, he apparently meant to deprive her of sleep and bleed her ears.

Directing her voice to the closed door, she called out, “Are you mad? It’s past midnight.”

The bellowing abruptly ceased. “We are all fools in love, milady.”

So he’d said several times earlier. The line he quoted was a famous one. Exhausted as she was, she found herself racking her brain for the author. Be it prose or verse, that he quoted any literary source was itself odd. He didn’t strike her as the poetry-reading sort. Who
was
the author? Dryden? Poe? Swift? Ordinarily she would have known it off the top of her head—she
was
the poetry-reading sort—but she was beyond exhausted, not to mention halfway to ill with hunger and chill.

Kate’s temper rose apace with her voice. Glaring at the door, thankfully locked, she shouted, “You are most certainly a fool, but we are not in love! And it’s bloody late. Go to bed!”

“Nay, if music be the food of love, I think I’ll play on a while. Betimes, I recall how you fancy being sung to.”

So that’s what this was about. He still hadn’t forgiven her for making him look foolish that night in the garden. As misbegotten as her plan had been, he really ought to let bygones be bygones. She had just opened her mouth to say so when the din started up again.

“What the devil is it you’re playing?” Barring bagpipes, she couldn’t imagine a more offensive instrumental.

Pitching his voice over the music, he answered, “The hurdy-gurdy. Do you play?”

“No.”

He paused as if thinking that over. “Meaning not the hurdy-gurdy, or no instrument at all?”

“I play the piano a little.” Could they really be having this conversation through a closed door at this hour?

“I could teach you to play the hurdy-gurdy and the Scottish harp, too.” His voice was almost boyish in its enthusiasm.

“No, thank you.” She was coming to wonder if her new husband might not be a bit, well…
off.

“Do you fancy favoring me with a song, then?”

“No!” She turned and punched the makeshift pillow. If she was of a mind to “favor” him with anything, it would be her knuckles to his nose.

She settled once more on her side. The strange serenade carried her thoughts back to his caterwauling that night in the garden. Beyond all reason, she smiled. He had the most dreadful voice of any man she’d ever heard sing, and yet thinking of the effort he’d put forth to please her back then sent her heart squeezing in on itself. A wistful sigh escaped her.

“Kate, do you sleep?”

She wasn’t sure why, but the thought of him just outside her door made her feel safe, not threatened. To think she’d been on the cusp of crying herself to sleep mere minutes ago. “If I said yes, would you go away?” She smiled into the “pillow” and closed her eyes.

There was a long pause, and then he said, “I’ll bid you good night, then.” Was it her imagination, or did his tone hold the slightest trace of regret—and hope?

For a mad minute, Kate considered rising, unbolting the door, and pulling him inside to join her on the makeshift pallet, his big, strong body a buffer to both loneliness and the floor. But that would be not only mad, but impractical. Hungry and dirty as she was, more than any other creature comfort, she desperately needed sleep.

Yawning, she slid her tented hands beneath her head. For whatever reason, she gave in to the temptation to call out one last time. “Good night, Rourke.”

When he didn’t answer, she supposed he must have already gone to seek his own bed.

Outside Kate’s door, Rourke lowered the hellish instrument, which someone had left forgotten in the attic to warp, and flattened his back against the wall.
Good

night, sweet Kate.

And she was sweet, or at least she could be. He’d seen glimpses of her kindness and her caring over the past week and before that, always for others, though, never for him. She’d only married him to save her scapegrace father and spoiled little sister, after all. So far she’d asked nothing for herself, though he would gladly shower her with the world’s riches, or his share of them, at least.

And she could be stoic, his Kate. Throughout the day, he’d been relentless in testing her mettle, and yet every time he had, she’d shown herself equal to the challenge. Braw and beautiful and bold, she’d bellied up to that wet, bone-chilling trek from the train station like a seasoned foot soldier rather than what she was, a wee woman in a muddy, sodden gown, a woman so small he could easily span her waist with his two clumsy, coarse hands.
Ah, Kate …

Earlier he’d known a moment’s guilt—more than a moment’s. When they’d reached the castle and she’d stood before him, teeth chattering and slender shoulders shaking, he’d almost lost heart for carrying out the rest of his plan. He hoped she hadn’t caught a chill—or worse. Petruchio might have set out to kill his Kate with kindness, but not so Rourke. He only wanted to teach his new wife a lesson, to soften her spleen so they might have a somewhat happy life, but not to harm her—no, never that.

What is it you dream of, my Kate?

Given the trials he’d put her through, he suspected her dreams would be filled with sumptuous foods and feather-soft beds and bottomless baths with steaming water that never cooled. Imagining her in a copper hip bath and nothing else, the water pearling over bared moon-pale skin, he felt his pulse quicken and his cock harden.
Ah, Kate …

He didn’t have to think twice about on what, or rather who, his dreams would center. Kate. That earlier brief kiss alone had left him aching for her. Assuming his restless body permitted him the luxury of sleep, he would dream about his beautiful bride and the wedding night that should have been theirs. Even looking like a cat pulled from the bottom of a bog, she stole his breath and touched his soul. Suddenly Rourke owned that taming her wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

Someday, my Katie girl, I want your dreams to be filled with me.

Owing to Toby scratching at the door, Kate rose early the next morning. Crossing the room to let the dog out, she had an unpleasant awareness of every bone and muscle in her body. On the way back to “bed,” she sneezed, once and then three times in a row.

I’m coming down with a head cold
—
bloody lovely.

After the previous day’s sodden trek, an onset of pneumonia wouldn’t greatly surprise her, but the genesis of the sneeze was more likely the dust. With sunlight pushing its way through the window’s dirty leaded-glass panes, she saw that the thick white powder blanketed everything within eyeshot. Instead of the furniture being buried beneath Holland covers or put in storage, it apparently had been left out uncovered for an indefinite period of time. Dust sheathed every flat surface and infiltrated every carved nook and cranny; dust motes floated like fairies in the close air, and dust bunnies apparently reproduced exponentially beneath every piece of furniture, much like the animal for which they were named. Lord only knew how long such a sad state of affairs had endured, but it was about to end.

Other than the old man Cheevers the night before, she hadn’t encountered a single servant. Her new husband might be an industry magnate on par with the American robber baron, Scots-born Andrew Carnegie, but he obviously knew next to nothing about what was required to run a large household. Fortunately Kate did. Though it had been a long time since she’d had occasion to put that particular talent to the test on a grand scale, she hoped it would be akin to riding a bicycle—once learned, never forgotten. And if she fell off, she’d simply get back up, brush herself off, and try again.

Be it riding bicycles in bloomers or managing households on shoestrings—compared to marriage, such pursuits were cakewalks.