Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (18 page)

Sabrina gasped and clasped a hand to her pounding heart, the other over her mouth.

Gideon raised a brow. “Can we keep them?”

Sabrina did not know if her husband’s foolish question, or his sporadic jiggling, tickled her sons’ fancies, but their fits of the giggles, was something wondrous to hear.

And while they laughed, Sabrina regarded Gideon, as he regarded her, a thousand serious questions and as many difficult answers hanging between them. But despite the grave implications in her boys’ sudden appearance, Sabrina became breathless, and the mist over her eyes had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with joy.

“We hunted us up a cat, Mama. Just like you said we could.” Rafe beamed with happiness and Sabrina realized that whatever Gideon’s reaction—and his anger would certainly be justified—he had not taken it out on the boys.

“There he is, Mama,” Rafe said. “There is our cat.”

“Good God,” Sabrina said, when she spotted the hideous creature.

Though she knew that before the day ended, she would be forced to answer for her deception, she could not help embrace her sons’ happiness in the moment.

Close behind the cat, and only half its size, waddled a beagle pup, poking and snuffling its way in her direction.

“He is cute, is he not, Mama?” Damon asked.

Hanging there suspended, the boys’ rare smiles and rarer laughter transformed their freckled faces, bringing one thought to Sabrina’s mind. They rarely, if ever, misjudged people, for they had learned early in life the danger in doing so.

Filled with rioting emotions, Sabrina tried not to cry. “Did you hunt him up, too?”

Gideon cleared his throat. “Ah, Drizzle is mine,” he said. “But I asked Rafe and Damon to take care of him, upstairs in the nursery, as a favor to me, because Drizzle needs them. If you agree to the plan, that is.” Her husband seemed again like a boy, in that moment.

Sabrina hauled the pup into her lap and allowed that he
was
quite cute. “Drizzle is not the same—”

“Pup who wet my boots?” Gideon, the boy, shrugged. “He will acclimate. He simply gets excited around people.”

Fast as lightening, Sabrina lifted the pup from her lap, but not fast enough.

CHAPTER TWELVE

For the rest of that day, Sabrina and Gideon sorted life into new and uncharted order—disorder really, for despite their best efforts, chaos reigned, the more so for two happy little boys, no longer confined to the nursery.

Sabrina could not believe how well Gideon seemed to be adjusting. But she was so used to working to keep peace in volatile situations, she kept waiting for an explosion to take place. Not knowing what might set Gideon off was exhausting.

“We need to move to the country,” he said later, over an informal tea in the nursery. “London is no place to raise children. My house in Hertfordshire is perfect. Damon and Rafe can each have their own rooms, off a huge nursery. Plenty of grass and trees outside to romp with Mincemeat and Drizzle. The stables and kennels are larger as well.”

“Stables big enough for ponies?” Rafe asked.

“Ponies?” Damon said. “Can we have ponies?”

Sabrina blushed. “Boys, please. Your manners.”

The twins ran with the possibilities of life in the country. They talked so quickly of plans and projects, and with such overwhelming excitement, that Damon spilled his milk.

When everybody rose to move out of flood range, or to clean the spill, Mincemeat jumped on the table, lapped some milk and ate some shortbread. By the time they got the cat down, Drizzle was standing on a chair, tail wagging, eating a scone.

Sabrina saw her frightened boys move out of the way, expecting a reprimand, or worse, until they saw that Gideon was laughing, and released their breaths.

Tears sprang to Sabrina’s eyes.

“Bree, what is wrong?” Gideon asked, worried. He went to her, the boys one step behind him.

“Thank you for not being angry,” she said. “This is silly. I never cry. It is just that everything is happening so fast.”

Rafe rubbed her back, Damon her arm, and Gideon realized they were used to caring for their mother, themselves. As she was used to caring for them—without him.

He was still an outsider, likely always would be.

As a child, the knowledge had carved a raw and heavy place in his small chest. Old feelings—very old—of yearning, inferiority, and unworthiness threatened to swamp him, even in memory. Always, it had seemed that he stood to the side, insignificant, desperate for attention, never daring to hope for affection.

He moved to the window. He knew his place now and he was comfortable with it. Even with this new family, he knew where he stood, and he accepted the position. He would watch over them, from afar.

“Perhaps we should slow our pace a bit,” he said, turning to face them. “Accept our new situation, become comfortable with it, before we make any significant changes.”

Sabrina laughed, almost with hysteria, and Gideon regarded her with concern.

“You might not have noticed,” she said, attempting a smile and failing. “But we have undergone several, significant changes already, and there are more on the way.”

More changes, Gideon wondered, or more babies, plural, as in twins again? He shivered.

Sabrina regarded her belly and then him. “I am in no condition to pack up a household and move it fifty miles to the north.”

“I had not noticed,” Gideon said, sharing a smile with her, which reminded him of their nights alone in the big bed upstairs, and brought him back from the window into their tenuous family circle. In that moment, he almost felt as if anything could happen.

Could they become something of a family, however patched and disjointed?

This was not a question to be answered in a day, Gideon knew, or asked ever, or even expected. He knew better than that. But he had to try.

If he tread carefully, he might even carve his own special place among them, a place where they wanted, needed him, to be. More, a place where they welcomed him.

And twenty minutes later, as Damon and Rafferty dragged him, each by a hand, toward the stables, so they could show Sabrina the other pups, hope blossomed in Gideon’s breast.

Before the amazing day came to an end, beds needed to be fashioned for the animals and arrangements made for Doggett to oversee the boys as they handled Drizzle’s walks and Mincemeat’s outdoor jaunts.

Mr. Chalmer was pleased to find all his limbs intact, after he slipped in a suspicious puddle in the foyer.

Mrs. Chalmer agreed not to turn the cat into its name, after she found Mincemeat up on the sideboard eating her dinner ham. For a cat with only three legs, that feline could certainly get around.

Miss Minchip, however, went on strike that night, just after Gideon and Sabrina relegated the boys to the nursery for the night. “Two boys are one thing,” said she, back ramrod straight, hands trembling with indignance. “But animals? And one of them Satan’s own spawn. Well,” she huffed. “I am simply too old for such nonsense.”

Gideon apologized for his thoughtlessness and offered the sharp old bird a generous stipend to oversee the nursery, animals and all, with two days off weekly to rest and recover. He even allowed that Mr. Waredraper could assist her when sewing did not rank high on his list of priorities. Yes, of course, she would remain in charge of the nursery at all times.

Miss Minchip grew younger before his eyes.

Once she took the boys in hand, Gideon vowed silently that he would create a place for himself in this new family of his. They needed him. Whether they wanted him was another issue, but that would be their choice. It mattered not to him, one way or the other.

As he prepared to retire, finally, he could not seem to locate his wife.

His life, he concluded as he searched, was noisier, crazier, more alive, and definitely more challenging with Sabrina and her boys in it.

Yes, she had concealed a colossal fragment of information, namely the existence of twin sons, which she should have revealed before the wedding, not days later.

Well, come to that, she had not revealed their presence at all, had she?

Nevertheless, after the boys’ revelations, Gideon understood her reasoning, all too well. What he did not understand was why she seemed now to be missing. Already he knew her for a worthier and stronger woman than to run away.

On their wedding night, when he wanted his husbandly rights, she had not really run, she had simply needed to come to terms with her new circumstances, and she decided to do so in the library. Nor did she run when he became surly yesterday morning, she had simply refused to respond to his orders, putting him in his place, which, he supposed, he deserved.

But her disappearance, tonight, seemed very much like running.

He found her, finally, at her desk, where he had located her that morning. She paled when she saw him and put her papers away, as she had done then, almost as if she were hiding something.

But no, he was being overly suspicious, after finding the boys, which, he reminded himself, he understood. When she rose to greet him, however, neither her smile nor her color returned to her face. “Gideon, I realize that you must be—”

“Shh,” he said, crossing her lips with a finger. “No apologies, no excuses, however worthy, are necessary. I know.”

Her face paled to flour paste. “What do you know?”

“That their father did not like noisy boys. You had spent years hiding them from a man you knew. Of course you would protect them from one you did not.”

When she made to speak, he shushed her, again. “I seek neither affirmation or denial, nor do I expect you to share any part of your past that you wish to keep to yourself. My intent is not to take advantage of any misplaced guilt you might feel, or to extract the details of your first less-than-good marriage—your words. I simply wish to assure you that you have not entered a similar, disagreeable union with me.”

He placed her trembling hand on his arm, covered it with his own and led her from the sitting room and up the stairs toward their suite. “Hear my promise: I am the son of such a father. I will never be such a one.” He stopped before the door to her bedchamber and raised a brow. “However … if there exist any other skeletons you might be hiding, now would be the time to reveal them.”   

Sabrina thought of the villain who purchased her, and his purpose in doing so. And she knew that no man, no matter his apparent kindness, could turn a blind eye to that sordid a truth.

Not about his own wife.

Not even this man.

So rather than answer, Sabrina turned to her new husband, put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Another day, another sale, she thought, even as she slipped, heart and soul, into the kiss … into her first-ever seduction. What difference to a body, bartered so many times, that another, more or less, meant nothing. Besides, she owed him for his gentleness and understanding.

“Oh, my dearest Sabrina, do not toy with a drowning man.” Gideon opened his mouth over hers and gave himself into to her keeping. “Do with me as you will.”

Sabrina almost wanted to smile then. Fancy that, a man who could please her even as he purchased her. A man who carried her to her bedchamber like some knight of old.

This man was an enigma, as was she, even unto herself.

For inasmuch as Sabrina was trading herself for her husband’s kindness and trust, however misplaced, an amazing streak of anticipation shivered her limbs, tightened her breasts and throbbed her womb.