Untamed Read Online Free PDF Page A

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