Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (4 page)

For the life of him, Gideon did not understand what was ailing him. From whence had come this perverse need to believe a woman he had known for less than a day would take him as a pauper?

What he should do, is ride to Drury Lane tonight, find a willing wench, purge Sabrina Whitcomb from his blood, forthwith, and cancel his ill-advised wedding.

Pertinent notion notwithstanding, he wanted nothing more than to continue doggedly in pursuit of a woman he felt duped into marrying, a woman he wished would want him as much as he wanted her.

Tomorrow, Bedlam and a straightjacket.

Tonight, pursuit.

“Let us examine the possibility of
like
and
attraction
or
lust
between us,” Gideon suggested, his voice a croaking rasp. He stepped a hair’s breadth nearer, and promptly fell into the shimmering violet depths of her eyes, once more.

Minutes—or hours—later, when he recovered, barely, he fought good sense and grazed her cheek with the back of a hand.

Sabrina swallowed, she trembled, but she did not seem able to turn away, and neither did he. In that moment, Gideon fancied that they were adjoined by some hot, invisible current flowing from one to the other of them and back, like heat lightening, sizzling without sound. “Though I have no right,” he whispered, awed and encouraged by the openness in her countenance. “I felt those things. I felt them the minute I saw you.”

Like a doe in lantern light, Sabrina stilled.

Silently denying his statement? Or rejecting a similar admission?

“Frivolous sensibilities have no place in my life,” she said, after another tension-fraught span and with no conviction. Then she moved again from his reach. “I am engaged to marry another. And what you felt this afternoon was hunger.”

“Yes,” he said, taking now one step forward for each of hers back.

When the wall stopped her retreat, Gideon placed tentative hands on her shoulders, and when she made no attempt to shrug him away, he slid his hand upward to cup her face and contemplate her full, ripe lips.

“As you say,” he whispered. “Hunger, pure and simple.”

While he waited for a subtle invitation to touch her lips with his own, Sabrina stood still as stone, cold, hard and unyielding. Yet he caught her inner struggle in the pulse at her throat and in her fists clenched tight and trembling against his chest.

Only when he flattened her hands over his hastening heart did she begin to thaw. But she pulled away, nevertheless, breathing as if she could not get enough air, leaving him disconnected and floundering.

“No wonder you have had no luck making your fortune,” she said, soothing her unkissed lips with her tongue and bringing his body to erect and rigid attention. “You believe in fairy stories.”

No one had ever accused him of
that
before. “I was not speaking of happily ever after, my dear Sabrina, but of physical hunger.” Was he, really? “Women are the romantics in this world, not the men,” he said for his own benefit.

“Not me,” she responded with a rueful laugh. “I cannot afford to be. I am sick unto death of poverty. I must keep food in my children’s bellies, clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads.”

She could have no idea how much he respected her resourcefulness and determination, but he was mightily frustrated that she resisted the attraction sparking nearly to flame between them.

“Children?” he asked, only now absorbing her words. “Plural? Do you think, perhaps, you will have twins then? You certainly seem bi—er capable enough, though I am no expert.”

Her eyes widened to saucers. “Not a—I hope not.”

For his sanity and to keep from kissing her, after all, Gideon placed her hand on his arm and started them strolling again. “When is he due?”

“Two weeks.”

Gideon stopped, surprised. “Your bridegroom is not due for two weeks? I, ah, must have misunderstood.”

She smiled. “Oh. No, my baby.”

Gideon cursed his revealing slip and sought to recover himself. “You hope for a boy then? That surprises me. I would think that, with no heir required of you in this instance, you would long for a girl.

“My sister-in-law adores dressing her daughters in lace and ruffles and setting them out to be prodigiously admired by the rest of us. Said daughters, however, manage always to ruin their perfection with spilled jam and paw prints. And sometimes, I must confess, I become too spirited a pony for them and jiggle their curls askew.”

Sabrina’s laughter effervesced Gideon’s heart in the way their near-kiss had quickened his body, yet something different, longing perhaps, hazed her eyes for a blink before she checked it.

Score one for him.

“Perhaps after your marriage,” he said, bringing home his point. “The Duke of Stanthorpe will become your son’s first pony...if Stanthorpe is capable...at his advanced age.”

Sabrina released him and returned to studying his grandfather’s portrait. “Even if he is not capable, he will do.” She sighed audibly. “Today is nearly over. He said he would arrive today.”

Gideon stepped behind her. “What would you do, Sabrina, if he did not come?”

“Wait for him,” she said, turning. “What choice do I have?”

“Would it be so very terrible, if he never came?”

That stubborn chin of hers went up again and all trace of vulnerability disappeared from her expression. “If the Duke of Stanthorpe refuses to marry me, Mr. St. Goddard, I will be forced to bring forth this child by the side of the road.”

“Poor as a church-mouse, are you?”

His jest did not in the least ease the lines between her brows, as he intended. Instead, she nodded in all seriousness. “A mouse without so much as a feather for her nest.” Fact, plainly stated, with no room for self-pity.

Gideon’s respect for her increased tenfold, as much as hope for himself dwindled. He had set out to inspire a degree of attachment in her, for him, without monetary cost, though he should know better than to expect success on that score. Fine, then, their relationship would have to remain on a par with every other in his life.

Gideon stepped back, disconcerted by a sudden, wild notion that theirs, of all relationships, merited better.

He shook of the burdensome fancy, ran a hand through his hair, and bowed. “I pray then that he will come.”

* * *

Left alone in the huge picture gallery, mourning a loss she could not name, Sabrina sought the nearest gilt chair. Lowering her trembling and ungainly body into it, she did not allow herself the luxury of resting against its tapestried back.

Strong. She must remain strong.

Stanthorpe would come. He would come.

She regarded the Duke’s portrait without emotion. Tomorrow would be their wedding day. She would marry a...mature, dependable man, and see an end to her struggles.

Nevertheless, panic rose in her like bile, and when a vision of Gideon St. Goddard came to her as a possible form of rescue, she forced herself to rout his chiseled features from her mind’s eye.

The man made her think of a deceptively docile dragon, one that would rise up and breathe fire when least expected. Rescue from such a quarter, she suspected, might be as much a hardship as the threat from which one needed delivering.

No. Neither magnificence nor charm would put food on her table. And no man was worth starving for. All were essentially the same, brutes out to appease their beastly appetites. The gentlemanly manner in which one comported himself before those appetites were satisfied, would in no way resemble his deportment afterward.

No member of the male persuasion had ever made her doubt that before. Most, simply verified it. Sabrina only wished that one had not come along to make her doubt that truth today, of all days.

Had the man’s intense eyes seemed almost to smolder when she thought he might kiss her?

No matter if they did. The future was out of her hands. Which was just as well, for she was in a fair way to making a muddle of it.

Ah, but his smile...would not be worth the price.

Her foolish musings were brought to an abrupt, but welcome, halt by the suddenly cavorting antics of her expected child.

CHAPTER THREE

The note Gideon had written after a long and sleepless night, and had sent ‘round to the front door only minutes before, arrived in the breakfast room on a silver salver.

Unlike the others present, Gideon pretended disinterest as Sabrina read her missive, while he made a show of deliberating between poached eggs and boiled.

“Stanthorpe isn’t coming,” she wailed with more distress than he would have liked or expected, and he dropped his pretense of indifference to rush to her side.

“Oh, wait,” she said stopping him in his tracks and allowing her guests to release their collective breaths. “He has suggested a proxy wedding, provided I can find someone to stand-in for him.”

“I would be happy to oblige,” Gideon offered, forestalling Doggett who appeared at the ready to make the offer and ruin Gideon’s plan.

In the small hours of the morning, Gideon had remained wakeful and aware, body and mind, that he had but to open the connecting door between his bedchamber and hers to find the remarkable Sabrina in her bed. Heady knowledge, that.

More than once, during those hours, he told himself he was a hundred times a fool, yearning to marry a woman he had just met, especially one big with child. His instant and inexplicable attraction to this woman suggested an immature weakness, a gullibility he thought he had lost a dozen years before.

He knew better. She was used goods.

Younger, more malleable women, virgins all, would fall at his feet for a smile, he kept reminding himself.

He owed Sabrina Whitcomb nothing, whether she had been Hawksworth’s friend or his sister, or whatever else she might have been. Except that he had made a promise to Hawksworth, who had, of course, been dishonest in extracting it. But just because Gideon had not stumbled across many honorable people in his lifetime did not mean
he
could not be honorable.

Furthermore, Grandmama was right; it was time he got him a wife and an heir.

Sabrina Whitcomb eased his soul just by walking into a room. He could not help imagine how she would ease his body as well. Yet simple physical attraction alone had not inspired his fantastical plan.

Sabrina was a woman who gathered and nurtured strays. And during the dark and lonely hours of the night, he had thought for one weak moment that he just might be among the most
lost
she would ever encounter, that he had been for more years than he cared to admit.

No, she did not love him. But neither did he love her. Yes, she calculated his worth in coin of the realm. But why should a wife be any different from anyone else in his life? Sabrina wanted the security that his name and money offered, and he wanted a purpose in life, someone to care for and protect. He wanted to be needed, to be cherished, if only for what he could provide.

He wanted...no longer to be alone.

He wanted Sabrina Whitcomb.

So he would buy her.

Marrying her would sever a pattern of unwelcome solitude and satisfy honor at one and the same time. They could wed today, as planned, so she could await the birth of her child with no worry for her future. And while she ostensibly awaited
Stanthorpe’s
arrival, they could come to know each other, without expectation.