Untamed by Hope Tarr Page A

mind.”
    To a man, they shrugged, indicating it was all the same to them.
    Lord Dutton cast him a sly look.
“Dinna
say the Bull of Bow
hasna
the balls for a
wee
wager.” He grinned, obviously pleased with his cleverness as a mimic.
    So they’d found out about his pugilist’s past. It was hardly a secret, though it was coming on seven years since he’d last stepped inside the ring. Unlike many professional pugilists addicted to the blood aspect of the sport, Rourke had known when to quit. He’d purchased his first few shares of railway bonds with the prize money won by knocking down the reigning contender, Big Jim O’Malley, and then signed on to a railway crew as a navvie and begun working his way up the ranks. He’d bought the railway company lock, stock, and barrel two years before and had since amalgamated a second—and a third.
    And yet to this lot he would never be more than a Scottish guttersnipe from the East London stews. It struck him that perhaps Lady Katherine wasn’t the only one of her kind in want of a working man’s lesson.
    “Verra well, gentlemen, you’re on. I accept your terms, only to make things more … shall we say, interesting, let us not limit ourselves to a paltry hundred pounds. What say you to a thousand?”
    He rested back on his heels to wait. It was no great secret that Lord Dutton lived on his expectations, tied to his papa’s purse strings in the form of the ubiquitous quarterly allowance. To be fair, that state of perpetual dependency was shared by many a society male. In Dutton’s case, however, he had borrowed against his yet-to-be realized installment. In short, his lordship was in debt up to his bulbous eyeballs. Ratcheting up the wager to one thousand pounds changed the stakes considerably.
    Predictably, Wesley’s plump cheeks lost their ruddy glow. “A … thousand pounds?”
    “Aye, unless you
gentlemen
suddenly dinna feel quite so confident of the terms.”
    “No, no, we’re on. A thousand pounds it is. That is … if you will accept my marker?” Dutton gulped again. A thin sheen of perspiration appeared on his high brow and long upper lip.
    “Of course, milord. We are all …
gentlemen
of our word, are we not?”
    The supper bell rang. Smiling, Rourke turned and continued on his way. Out in the lobby, he headed for the coatroom instead. Gavin and Harry would have to finish the evening without him. The brief interlude had changed his mind about haring after Lady Kate. No doubt she expected him to do just that. The better strategy—and, indeed, what had started out as a wooing was rapidly segueing to a war—would be to give her the rest of the long, dull evening to wonder where
he
had gotten to.
    Lady Kate, you may not yet know it, but you’ve met your match in me.

    Face hot, Lord Dutton followed the Scotsman’s departure with his eyes. He hadn’t given up on marrying Kate quite yet, not entirely. Ordinarily an earl’s eldest daughter would be beyond his touch, but reliable rumor had it the Lindsey sire suffered from the gamester’s disease.
    As soon as the Scot was out of earshot, Wesley turned his pudgy countenance on him and demanded, “What the devil are you about?”
    Dutton waited for the other three men in their party to drift away before turning to answer. “What do you mean?”
    “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but you’re not precisely flush these days. Only last night you admitted to borrowing against your next quarter’s allowance. You hadn’t enough tin in your pockets to pay the hansom driver.”
    Dutton didn’t deny it. “I couldn’t turn down the chance to tweak that boxer’s broken nose and teach him a lesson in the bargain. Who the bloody hell does he think he is, mixing freely with his betters and calling himself a gentleman as though he is our equal? Stealing away Kate Lindsey stands as the final straw.”
    “He hardly stole her. She might have turned him down, only she didn’t.”
    Dutton scowled. “The bitch is merely