Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (5 page)

Despite her cost to his pocketbook, and his pride, Gideon had found himself considering Sabrina’s needs in this final decision. She must have suffered in her short life. One did not become so pragmatically focused, so jaded, for no reason. Though she was not hard and unfeeling as regards to her strays.

Gideon did not know the particulars of the unsavory first husband or the motivation behind her mercenary choice of him as her second. He still worried about Hawksworth’s hand in that, but life sometimes forced less than exemplary choices. In time, he hoped she would willingly reveal all of it.

He hoped...for more than he could ever have.

In time, if a relationship between them did not seem feasible,
Stanthorpe
could always write that he had had a change of heart and was having the marriage annulled. If it came to that,
Stanthorpe
would leave her with a comfortable competence and she would never have to sell herself again.

If all worked out to Gideon’s satisfaction, however, they could consummate their union at any time that seemed the right time.

Either way, for a while, at least until after her babe was born, he was doomed to spending more
hard
nights, like the last.

Except that he would no longer be alone in his bed, or in his life.

“Mr. St. Goddard?” Her words brought him back to the present and everyone’s eyes upon him. “Thank you,” she said.

Gideon straightened, wondered how long he had been wool-gathering, and saw immediately that Sabrina’s smile did not reach her eyes.

Dare he hope that she pined for the penniless wanderer before her? Or that perhaps she might, eventually? She might even come to request an annulment of
Stanthorpe
, at which point, Gideon would tell her who he was and make her deliriously happy.

And pigs would fly.

She was right; he was a romantic. He should take to penning his Gothic machinations, like some fanciful novel by Mrs. Radcliff, and profit at least from his suffering to win her.

Especially since he need not win her at all.

A simple financial acquisition would do.

“This delay can only be good,” she said, as he helped her from her chair and she regarded her stomach ruefully. “In a month the Duke might gaze upon me, for the first time, at my best, rather than at my worst.”

And if this was her worst, Gideon imagined he had a treat in store.

“If you will all excuse me,” she said to the room at large. “I shall go and prepare for my wedding.”

At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and released his arm. “Thank you for your offer to stand in. The new Vicar, who has only just arrived to take over the parish, sent a note first thing this morning to say he would be here at three.”

“The banns have been posted and the license procured?” Gideon asked, glad he had taken care of everything by messenger from Sussex before the new Vicar’s arrival.

“All is in readiness,” she said. “You need only stand in Stanthorpe’s stead and say, ‘I do,’ then affix your name as his proxy in the parish register.”

“I expect I can do that without error. Here, let me walk you up. I, too, would like to dress as befits the occasion.”

He would not sign himself as proxy, of course—pray God he would get away with shutting the book before the Vicar took a look. Then he would distract the man with an offer of libation. As a ruse, it was weak, but it was all Gideon had.

As he prepared to do the deed, Bilbury, his valet, tut-tutted disapprovingly, in that way dared only by the most long-standing of retainers. “A proxy wedding, your grace?”

“As you say.”

“But, standing in for yourself?”

Gideon raised a brow. “Is there a problem with my decision?”

The question brought sudden color to his starched valet’s paste complexion. “Certainly not, your grace, but she
is
a right one, if you will pardon me saying so.”

Gideon nodded. “It appears a distinct possibility.”

“Everybody below-stairs says so, even Mrs. Chalmer. So I am to suggest that you be nice to her—your bride that is, not Mrs. Chalmer.”

“I shall even be nice to Chalmer. You as well, though you, none of you, deserves it.”

Bilbury nodded as he adjusted the form-fitting shoulder on Gideon’s frockcoat of clarence-blue. “Mind, we do not see why you must lead her on, but we suppose it is for you to say, since you are Stanthorpe.”

“If you expect me to thank all and sundry for that reproachful concession,” Gideon said. “You may all find new employment on the morrow.”

“Yes, your grace.” Bilbury pretended a search for “that scapegrace stickpin,” to cover his lack of proper horror.

Gideon raised a brow, certain that his man had not quite finished with him.

“You just be nice to her,” his intrepid valet repeated as he tied Gideon’s neck-cloth fit to strangle.

Miss Minchip and Mr. Waredraper had performed a miracle, transforming the drawing room into a wedding chapel, complete with silk-carpeted aisle and flowered canopy. The hothouse jasmine, lilacs and roses that graced the tables had been Doggett’s addition.

For their contribution to the wedding arrangements alone, Gideon was willing to support the three of them to their dying day.

While he awaited his bride beside the Vicar, Miss Minchip sat at the pianoforte and began to play a Bach Sonata with surprising skill and no sheet music.

As a bride, Sabrina was beautiful, and blushing, which was a surprise to Gideon, considering the nature of this union, and the bride’s delicate condition. In addition, he had imagined her as far too stubborn to allow for a show of emotion. He liked that about her, her fight. But he also liked her honesty, even of emotion, even when the truth could be painful.

Sabrina Whitcomb would give as good as she got, in and out of bed.

Gideon liked most women, he admitted to himself, especially the pleasure derived in their beds, but as a wife, this one appealed to him in myriad ways. And he suspected he had not yet discovered a fraction of them—an adventure he anticipated with surprising relish.

Gideon looked about him with amazement. This was his wedding day. Yet everything seemed hazy and dreamlike, reminding him of a fantasy, or a nightmare—it was yet to be determined which. An event not wholly within his grasp, much as he suspected he would look back upon it in the years to come.

He wondered how Sabrina would remember this day, twenty years hence, when they were an old married couple with a score of grandchildren. Would she blush, all over again, at her scheme to net herself a rich and eligible husband, knowing she had confessed all to him in advance?

Gideon knew how the
ton
would regard the proceedings. They would see Sabrina walking down the aisle, big with child, as infamous, a marriage
of necessity
, and a poor alliance at best. She, more than he, would become grist for the gossip mill.

As a peer, he was foolishly considered a prize on the marriage mart and was down in the betting books as slated to come in dead last to the altar, paradoxically making him a prime catch.

Gideon scoffed inwardly, relieved to keep society at bay, at least for today, glad no one of note was expected, particularly since his bride had come to a dead stop mid-way up the aisle.

She stood rooted and wide-eyed, frozen nearly in horror.

“Sabrina? Did you change your mind?”

“You—”

He went to her. “Are you unwell?”

She looked him down and up, shining pumps to diamond-studded stickpin and touched the pin’s crystalline jewels with trembling fingers. “You look so—”

“Groomly?” he asked. “Is there such a word? Groomlike, then?”

Her eyes filled to brimming. “Yes. That. And—”

“I thought you should have a wedding to remember.”

“But your clothes,” she said in confusion.
Were too expensive
, she did not add.

Oh, good God. Gideon wordlessly sought aid from those around him.

Bilbury eradicated his smile, posthaste.

Mrs. Chalmer gave Gideon an I-told-you-so smirk, for which Mr. Chalmer pinched her, for which the man would be getting his ears boxed later.

Gideon cleared his throat of the laughter lodged there and returned his attention to his uneasy bride. “I borrowed the clothes from the Duke. Do you mind? I should have asked.”

Sabrina released her breath and nearly stopped trembling. “Oh. Oh, I see. Well, then, that is to say, I suppose...though I wish— Fine.” She placed her hand on his arm when he offered it and he indicated to Miss Minchip that she should begin, again, to play.

Gideon walked his bride to the Vicar with dispatch, afraid she would turn tail and run, otherwise. Not that he needed her, or anyone, but now that he had set his course, he wanted it done.

After that, Miss Minchip sang like a nightingale and the service moved along smoothly enough. Except for the point at which the words ‘till death do you part,’ were spoken, and the length of time Gideon’s life, and therefore his hasty marriage might last, came as a near-paralyzing shock to him.

By the time the ceremony was over and the assemblage applauded, however, Gideon realized there was no turning back. His fate had been sealed and he was strangely pleased, after all.

Sabrina regarded him with trepidation, or expectation, and so he took her into his firm embrace and kissed her witless.

With the act, his apprehension turned to anticipation.

His bride went week in the knees and Gideon all but crowed, because she was so overcome by his kiss, he needed to hold her up when it ended.

His life, his future, seemed suddenly splendid, and he congratulated himself on this brilliant plan.

The Vicar commented wryly, and pointedly, that in the case of proxy weddings, it was
unnecessary
for the bridal kiss to take place. Then he told Sabrina to sign the register, first with her maiden name and then her married one—the name she did not yet know. His name.

Gideon bit off an oath.

His frantic mind-search for a solution ended with a familiar screech that severed his final thread of elation and sent his euphoria straight to hell.

“Stop this wedding at once!” Lady Veronica Cartwright, his former mistress—no, drat, he had forgotten to go and break it off with her last night—appearing the tart in crimson watered silk, charged up the aisle like Wellington before the Life Guards. “Gideon St. Goddard, what do you think you are doing?”

“What are you doing? Here? Now?”

“A good thing I am, and just in time to stop this farce. When your grandmother told me—”

Gideon raised a staying hand. “Let me make the introductions. Sabrina, this is Lady Veronica, a childhood friend. Ronnie, my wife. You are, I am pleased to say, too late to stop anything.”

“Not at all. You can have the marriage annulled.”

Gideon squeezed Sabrina’s hand and stepped from his protective stance to reveal her in her full blossoming glory. “Too late for that, too.” And in the event anyone could possibly have missed the imposing sight, Gideon patted Sabrina’s middle with a possessive hand. “We suspect it must be twins.”

Ronnie screeched theatrically, and Bilbury, who had referred to her as
that toadying trollop
for as far back as Gideon could remember, chuckled inelegantly.