Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One)

by Annette Blair

  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.

  Grateful for deliverance, Sabrina rose to make her way to the nursery, and her purpose for everything.

  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.

  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 pa
rticulars 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—”