Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (23 page)

“I keep expecting you to. The twins are acting like pups, following you around as if you had a brisket bone in your pocket.” She touched his face, ran her hand over his day’s growth of beard. “Why are they not afraid of you, I wonder, with your dark, brooding looks. Wherever you go, whatever you do, they are either watching or following.”

“I had noticed, and at first I found it amusing.” He cleared his throat, embarrassed. “It is somewhat like hero worship, is it not? After a while, I did begin to feel a bit...crowded. But today, when they seemed to have disappeared—” He shrugged. “Missing them actually bothered me.”

Sabrina rose, removed her dressing gown and climbed into her bed.

Gideon just stood there and watched, wanting her in his arms so badly, he could taste the want. Not that he needed her. But, frankly, just the wanting was an experience he found almost too uncomfortable for words.

“I saw the boys following you,” she said. “So I told them to give you some time to yourself.”

“I am sorry you did that. When you see them in the morning, tell them, first thing, to come and see me, will you? I missed them today.”

“You mean that you are not feeling suffocated?”

He liked their attention. He liked when they needed him or just wanted to show him something as simple as a garden snail they had found, but for some reason, he found himself loathe to admit it. “I decided that the unknown was worse,” he said. “Perhaps it is because when they are behind me, I at least know what they are up to.” He sighed, finding it difficult to see her and want her without hope for much longer. “I will leave you to sleep.”

“Are you not going to kiss me goodnight?”

Gideon raised his chin, determined to be strong, then he caught her smile and it was just a little too cheeky. “Wait a minute. Are you teasing me?” He needed no more provocation than that to move her way.

When she opened her arms to him, his heart tripped. “Come to bed, your grace,” said she.

Gideon shed his dressing gown in short order and took his bride in his arms as fast. This is home, he thought and sighed, aware he would have scoffed at the notion a mere month before. Despite the vulnerable implications, Gideon delighted in having Sabrina in his arms again.

“Mmm.” She kissed him.  “I have worried, that after witnessing Juliana’s birth, you would never want to sleep with me again.”

“You want me to sleep with you, then? It is not just our bargain you are fulfilling?”

“You are being precipitate.”

Gideon chuckled. “Whatever fault you may accuse me of,
precipitate
is not among them. Nevertheless, for now, because you are not ready for more, I want only to hold you and talk with you. I want to wake up with you to feed Juliana in the night. I—”

Sabrina looked back at him when he did not finish. “You...?”

“Sound like a besotted fool.”

“Are you?”

“Whatever I am, naked with you is best. Here,” he said. “Let us remove your gown.” After they did, Gideon sighed in contentment and began to relearn his wife’s body. “Good God, half of you is missing.”

Sabrina giggled. “Not missing, sleeping in her cradle, praise be.”

“Oh, this is nice,” Gideon said. “When you are not
with child
you are a fine figure of a woman, I see.”

“You see nothing; this room is as dark as the forest-green of your eyes when you are angry or...needy.”

“I see in this way,” he said, running his hands everywhere now. “No, do not tense up,” he said. “I maybe
needy
but I know my limits. You still have healing to do and I promise to be on my best behavior in bed.”

Sabrina barked a laugh. “That will be the day. Gideon?”

“Yes, Sabrina.”

“I might like being naked in bed with you, too.”

It was a beginning, he thought.

* * *

Damon and Rafferty knocked on Gideon’s bedchamber door during his morning grooming.

Bilbury answered and started to send them away.

“No, Bilbury,” Gideon said. “Damon, Rafe, come in,” he called. “I missed you yesterday. How are Mincemeat and Drizzle?”

Damon sighed. “Drizzle sprinkled Miss Minchip.”

“Oops,” Gideon said.

Rafe grinned. “She was not happy. And she says that Mincemeat is getting too fat.”

“Of course he is getting fat. He is always stealing food.” Gideon thought the boys seemed intimidated by Bilbury’s ferocious presence. “Would you like to stay while Bilbury shaves me?” he asked them. “We can have a
men-to-men chat
while he does.”

The boys sat on the straight chairs Bilbury brought over, side by side, their small legs out straight. “What do men talk about during man to man chats?” Damon wanted to know.

“Man things,” Gideon explained. “You, know. Horses, racing, carriages, wom—Ah, cats and dogs.”

“We never saw a man shaved,” Damon said, standing and stepping closer. “Do you ever worry that he will cut your nose off?”

Rafferty snickered.

“No,” Gideon said. “But I thought he was going to cut my ear off, once.”

Bilbury bristled. “Your grace. I hope you know I am a better valet than to do that.”

Rafe stepped very close. “Are valets always starched and bristly?” he asked, beneath his breath, but loud enough to make Bilbury stiffen.

“Always.” Gideon winked at the boy. “And bossy, too. But you will never look finer than when your valet has turned you out.”

“Thank you, your grace.”

To Bilbury’s dismay, the boys returned the following morning at shaving time, as they did the next day, and the next, and so forth.

The morning Gideon wanted an early start, he sent Bilbury to fetch them, before allowing the man to begin.

That night in bed, Sabrina rolled into her husband’s arms. “What do you find to talk about with the boys while you are shaving? They have been raving about your man to man chats.”

“We talk about man things.” Gideon kissed his wife’s nose. “Mostly about how to please the ladies.”

Sabrina squeaked, but her husband’s mouth stopped her cold, or warm, and getting warmer.

The day his Estate Manager, James Warren, came down from Hertfordshire to meet with Gideon, the boys showed up in Gideon’s study during the meeting, so he invited them to stay.

An hour later, Sabrina opened the door in a panic. “I cannot find—”

Damon was sitting on Gideon’s lap, Rafe on Jim Warren’s. They all four waved at her standing there, dumbstruck.

“We are discussing crop rotation and horse breeding, Mama,” Rafe said. “One day, I shall have an estate of my own.”

Gideon thought Rafferty looked happier than he had ever seen.

“I am listening, too,” Damon said. “I am going to raise race horses.”

Temporarily, however, the only race horse Damon rode was Gideon, himself, daily and with enthusiasm.

Gideon thought the boy a
bruising
rider, literally.

* * *

To stop the vicious gossip Veronica had started, Grandmama was going to give a Christmas Ball in Sabrina’s honor, it was decided after a week of discussion.

“Once everyone gets to know you, my dear,” Grandmama said, patting her hand. “They will realize what a liar that woman is.”

She regarded her grandson with a raised brow, and Sabrina saw from whence he inherited his habit of doing so. “They will also realize that my grandson’s taste in women has finally, vastly, improved.”

Gideon, in turn, looked insulted, sheepish, and proud.

Grandmama wanted to introduce her granddaughter-in-law to Society and show one and all the refined beauty who had won Stanthorpe. “The minute they meet you, Sabrina,” she declared. “They will love you as we do. And they will know exactly why Gideon married you.”

“Heaven help us all,” Sabrina said.

“But everyone who is anyone is off to the country for Christmas,” Gideon pointed out.

“Nonsense,
I
am here,” Grandmama snapped. “Yes, I know that town is quiet and thin of company at this time of year, but there are enough of the
right
people staying through Christmas to make for a comfortable squeeze. Soon enough after the ball, word will spread to the rest.”

The day Grandmama came to pick Sabrina up for the final fitting of her ball gown, the poor old woman came upon her tough-as-nails grandson racing through the foyer, whinnying, Rafe on his back, charging him to go faster, Damon running behind.

“I shall need a month in the country, at least, to recover from that sight,” she said.

Juliana was nearly four weeks old by then and Sabrina was glad Gideon worked off his excess energy playing with the boys. Fast approaching was the day she would be well enough to consummate their marriage, and she was more skittish over that than she was at the thought of being introduced to the cream of London Society.

Two days before Christmas, Gideon, Sabrina and the children climbed into two carriages for the move across town to Grandmama’s luxurious townhouse on St. James Square. Sabrina’s ball would take place there that night.

“You must all move to my house,” Grandmama had said, several days earlier, beginning her argument. “Sabrina, you would be able to feed Juliana before the ball and return upstairs mid-way through, if needs be.” That pretty much won Sabrina over, Gideon thought. Damn, the old bird was good.

“If the boys were there, I would allow them to peek into the ballroom from the musicians gallery, early in the evening,” she said. “They would be able to see you both in your finery, dancing together at a great ball.” Gideon knew that second argument won Rafe and Damon’s approval.

“And since the day after the ball is Christmas Eve,” she added. “We can all settle in for our first family Christmas together.” This won him over, though he thought Sabrina and the boys looked less certain by then.

“It all sounded so easy, so reasonable, when Grandmama suggested all of this,” Sabrina all but wailed in the carriage on their way to Basingstoke. “But I am nervous as a cat.”

“Mincemeat is not nervous, are you fellow,” Rafe asked the cat purring in his lap.

“Which reminds me,” Gideon said to Damon. “You did take Drizzle for his walk, as I asked, right before we left?”

Damon petted his pup’s exposed belly. “He drizzled like he was s’pose to, didn’t you boy?”

The boys had not taken to calling him Papa, Gideon mused, regarding them across the carriage with their pets. Neither did they call him Papa Gideon. Damon had, the day after their talk, called him Uncle Papa, for effect, Gideon suspected, then he had rolled on the floor giggling. But nothing more had come of the conversation.

Not that it mattered.

At Basingstoke, the children, including Juliana, were settled into the nursery. Sabrina and Gideon took the master suite that Grandmama had vacated the day she lost husband number two.

The rest of the evening, he devoted to not dressing for the ball. It never took him as long to dress as his wife, so he bided his time before beginning, anxious as a boy at Christmas to see his wife in all her finery.
Not in black
, he thought with a smile.

Suddenly he wondered what he was doing pacing, waiting to see Sabrina in her gown, when he had much rather see her out of it.