Free Untamed by Hope Tarr

Who better to dive into sin with than a big, buff Scotsman with emerald eyes; a sexy, lopsided grin; and a fancy for whispering naughty bits in her ear?
    Feeling her face heat, Kate shook her head. “No, I didn’t meet anyone. Why do you ask?”
    Bea shrugged, the smocked night rail’s square neck sliding off one slender shoulder. “You seem … well, different somehow. Your cheeks are pink, and your eyes are all soft and … glowing.”
    Kate dipped her head. “I’m sure it’s just a result of becoming overheated in the crush.”
    If she was so transparent to her baby sister, what must those who’d seen her during the ill-advised waltz have concluded? Had she been making calf eyes at her dance partner? She hoped to God not. Perhaps it was a good thing Mr. O’Rourke had left early, presumably to gather his rosebuds elsewhere. If he was a typical man, and Kate was coming to believe there was precious little variation in the gender, he was likely disporting himself in some brothel at that very moment, oblivious to her mooning.
    Bea’s voice called her back to the present. “I shouldn’t like to think of you all alone once I leave. Don’t you want to marry, Kat? Oh, I know you say you don’t, but goodness, if you don’t, what
will
you do with yourself once I’m gone?”
    Fondness washed over her. Bea was such a child still. She reached behind and slid her arm about her sister’s slender shoulders. “In the main, I shall eat plate upon plate of lovely chocolate trifle and grow fat as milcher and merry as a clam, and I shan’t care a jot for what anyone thinks of me ever again, truly I shan’t.”
    What she didn’t add was that her particular notion of spinsterhood didn’t include continuing to play keeper to their drunken lout of a father. Once Bea was flown from the nest and settled into a fine feathered one of her own, Kate meant to go, as well. The details of how she would support herself in her independence remained to be fully worked out, but that was not to say she didn’t have a plan. For years now, she’d kept a journal and written in it almost daily. Much of what she’d scribbled was dreck, but she fancied some of her recent compositions, mostly poetry and short stories, were quite good, perhaps even … publishable. How much money a published author might earn was as yet unknown to her, but once Bea was settled, she meant to find out.
    In the meantime, the money trickling in from Mr. St. Claire’s sale of their
cartes postales
was amounting to a tidy sum. Had she not used the money to pay the accounts, she would have far more than one hundred pounds tucked away. Fortunately, more work was on its way. Recently the photographer had approached her about coming in for another sitting. This time he fancied a setting from classical mythology with her attired as Artemis. The Greek goddess of the hunt was also the patroness of unmarried women, a sign from the Powers That Be she was headed in the proper direction, it must be!
    Until she found a way to make a living by her pen, she must leave off indulging in too many sweets. A PB could ill afford pimples or a gain in girth. Kate deemed the sacrifice well worth it.
    As scrumptious as chocolate was, freedom would taste far sweeter.

    Two days later, Patrick O’Rourke turned up on Kate’s doorstep.
    It was her “at-home day,” that one day midweek when the lady of the house turned up her door knocker and prepared to receive callers. For Kate, the weekly ritual was also the cornerstone of her campaign to keep up the appearance of prosperity. Given the sad state of their finances, that was a considerable challenge. Whereas ordinarily a lady of her station living in London would think nothing of provisioning her tea tray with exotic delicacies purchased from Fortnum and Mason, Kate did her own baking. This week’s selection was buttered tea cakes and Scotch shortbread. The humor of the latter hadn’t hit her until she was rolling out the dough. After her