“The babe’s nursing will slow the flux,” Sabrina said. “Fold one of the cloths for now, will you, and place it between my legs?”
After everything, Gideon could not believe that she blushed when she asked.
“Later,” she said, “after I rest, I will wash.”
Placing the padding between her legs, Gideon found himself shocked by the terrifying amount of blood pooled there.
His head swam and his stomach roiled...and the floor rose up to greet him.
No sooner did he land, however, than he heard the baby wailing furiously, and Sabrina calling his name, both sounds coming to him as if through a long and deep tunnel.
The lightheadedness had come upon him so quickly, he had been caught unaware, but now he turned his head toward the sounds and, despite the dip to the floor and the spin in the room, Gideon moved his arms and legs to brace himself and attempt to rise.
Once he was up, he placed one foot in front of the other and made his way around the bed, determined not to go down again.
His wife and his daughter needed him.
Sabrina’s concern, he could tell, despite her attempt to hide it, was tempered with a good deal of amusement. He cared not. He had reached her when she most needed him, which was all that mattered.
“Sit there, on the bedside chair,” she said. “And lower your head between your knees. That should help.”
Gideon slipped, rather than sat, in the chair and did as she bid.
Foolish as the position seemed, the ridiculous contortion did help clear his foggy brain considerably. When he felt almost normal again, he raised his head, rested it against the chair-back and closed his eyes.
“Good,” Sabrina said. “Rest for a few minutes. You have had a difficult time of it.”
“You need not sound so amused,” Gideon said, not bothering to open his eyes while the bedchamber continued to waltz about him. “You have quite established your superiority in the birthing department.”
“I have had practice. Double practice, when you come down to it. Did you hurt yourself when you fell, though it was more a fold and glide type of swoon you performed. Very neat.”
He opened one eye. “If you ever, ever, tell anyone that I swooned at the birth, I will beat you.”
Sabrina giggled. “Sorry. I already perceive that you will not.”
“Thank you,” Gideon said. “That is the nicest compliment you have paid me to date. However, lest we lose track of the subject, let me say that you also had more than a few days to prepare for this.”
“I did, and for the first time, I did not give birth alone. Thank you. You were magnificent.” She had not seen her first husband for two months before the twins’ birth, for he considered her useless to him, then. Neither did she see him for three months after, praise be, because the tardy and remorseful midwife had frightened him with tales of birth fever spread through a woman’s bloody after-flux.
“Are you up to calling a maid to take and bathe the baby,” Sabrina asked her husband. “I think she is finished nursing for the moment.”
By then, Gideon seemed to have regained enough of his equilibrium to stand and perform the menial task she assigned him.
By the time the maid answered his summons, Gideon seemed more himself. But he appeared loathe to let young Alice take the baby away. “Prepare two basins of warm water,” he told her. “And bring them here.”
Gideon took the fretting babe from Sabrina’s arms, then, and the mite’s squeaky, little whimpers calmed the minute he cuddled and crooned to her, almost as if she knew him.
Sabrina caught her trembling lip between her teeth. “I repeat, she is yours to name, as she believes you are hers to command.”
Gideon sat on the bed beside her, the babe cradled in his protective embrace. “I would not mind if she...thought of me as her Papa. The boys, too, except that they knew their father, so perhaps they would not care to. At any rate, it might be best to allow them to decide. It matters not to me, of course.”
“Of course,” Sabrina said, getting for herself a rare glimpse of the true Gideon St. Goddard.
“But how would you feel if they did call me Papa, eventually?”
His wife’s hesitation eroded the thread of expectation Gideon refused to name.
“You are a good man, Gideon St. Goddard. I know you are, and yet I feel compelled to remind you that they are but babes, the three of them. I will not have anyone hurt them. Not again. I will not.”
Gideon did not know what to say to that. He understood her warning, was humbled that she considered him good at all, especially when he considered all the ways in which he was not. He understood her need to protect her children.
If only she understood that he would protect them as fiercely, himself. With his dying breath, if needs be.
Sabrina covered his hand with her own. “What shall we call her?”
“Juliana, perhaps?” Gideon dared suggest. “I have loved the name since I was a child. It is my grandmother’s.”
“Oh, I like that.”
Gideon wondered how someone who had just endured so much could remain so beautiful.
“I like it very well, indeed. Juliana St. Goddard.”
The sound of it gave Gideon a quick and pleasant flood of warmth in the region of his cold rogue’s heart. Juliana would carry his name. Of course, she would; he was married to her mother. “Thank you,” he said, sincerely moved, though he gave his thanks for so much more than her allowing him to name her daughter.
Alice, the maid, brought Gideon’s basins of warm, soapy water, and he set himself up to supervise the girl’s attempt at bathing the babe. He ignored his wife’s raised brow at his high-handed tactics, because, well, this was important.
“Be careful she does not fall,” he cautioned Alice. “Hold her head. No, watch her belly, the cord.” And finally, he all but elbowed the poor maid out of his way and sent her up to the nursery for his old cradle.
Gideon proceeded to take great care and inordinate pleasure in giving Juliana her first bath. “Did you ever see such tiny fingernails in your life?” he asked Sabrina, earning himself a muffled giggle in reply.
After that, he did not deign to look in the direction from which the uncivil squeak had come, he simply directed his conjecture toward the beautiful and wide-eyed babe, herself. “And look at your little toes,” he crooned. “And your perfect little button nose, exactly like your amused Mama’s.”
Alice returned with the cradle, placed it on the floor beside Sabrina’s bed, and left again, seeming slightly less put out than before she left. Gideon carried the clean and wrapped baby back to the bed, patting her little back, loving the feel of her, warm and soft and sleepy in his arms. “Forgive me,” he said, looking down at his tired wife. “For last night.”
Sabrina touched the back of his hand to her cheek, and Gideon experienced that odd heart-flood again.
“Nothing to forgive,” she said.
“I should be whipped for my determination. My fault she came early.”
“Then I must thank you.”
Gideon examined Juliana’s tiny pink hand waving before his eyes, kissed the exquisite silk of it, and understood, for the first time in his life, the meaning, the enormity, of love. Then he looked into the eyes of her mother and understood the emotion he had not recognized earlier. Love for her daughter.
Amazing, really, that she could radiate such an abundance of that emotion, lying there, as she was, drenched in blood, and sweat, and utterly exhausted.
Though Gideon hated to let go of Juliana, he needed to tend Sabrina, so he bent on his haunches and placed his daughter in her cradle. “Is she all right, do you think?” he asked his wife, not taking his gaze from the babe.
“Beautifully healthy. Big, shiny eyes, a cry to split our ears, and she suckles as greedy as you.”
That got her husband’s eye-sparkling attention, as she intended. He had seemed melancholy somehow, though Sabrina suspected he would deny as much, if she mentioned it
.
“You did enjoy my...ministrations last night, he said looking up at her, his hunter’s eyes bright, intense. “Five maybe six times, if I remember correctly.”
Sabrina groaned. “I will never mention the swoon again, if you never mention the five or six times.”
“It was seven, but I will never mention it again.”
“Liar,” she accused.
“Here,” he said, pulling her blanket back. “Let me wash you and get you into a clean fresh bed, so you can sleep while Juliana does.”
“Oh, Gideon, no.”
But he did not listen, for which she was immensely embarrassed, but ever so much more grateful.
Disconcerting as his bathing her—though no worse than his sexual attentions the night before, or his help during the delivery—Sabrina gloried in her husband’s gentleness and concern.
He washed her tenderly with the warm, soft, soapy cloth, and before she knew it, he was carrying her into his bedchamber and placing her in his bed.
Then, it seemed, hours had passed, and he was slipping into the huge bed beside her with a screaming Juliana in his arms. Sabrina found his kissing her brow, deliciously pleasant upon waking.
Her rogue was dressed and shaved, handsomer today than yesterday. “Good morning Sleepyhead,” he said. “You have had a good rest, I hope. Alice is already next door putting your bedchamber to rights, and here is one hungry little girl wanting her Mama.” He turned to their fretful babe. “Here she is, Sweetpea.”
Juliana was frantic and Sabrina blushed as she untied the bodice of her gown to bare her breast. As Gideon placed her new daughter—their new daughter—in her arms, Juliana latched ravenously onto her nipple.
Lying on her side, Sabrina settled her daughter to suckle, smoothing an amazing thatch of black curls from her tiny brow. And an overwhelming sense of well-being, of rightness, enveloped her. A new experience that, and one she prayed fervently would continue.
Gideon moved her gown aside, away from Juliana’s face so he could see her, and as he did, the babe caught and curled her hand around his finger, bringing it tight against Sabrina’s breast as she nursed.
“I had better stop trying to decide which of you is more beautiful,” Gideon said, his voice raw with emotion. “And tell you that being here with the two of you, like this, is probably the best gift I have ever received.”
Sabrina saw love for Juliana, clear as a summer breeze, in her husband’s warm, sea-green eyes, and realized what an error she might have made in warning him away. How, now, to tell him she would be pleased to have her children call him Papa, without bringing her warning to mind?
“Who else but Juliana’s Papa should be here,” she said.
And Gideon understood her offer. She saw the wary gratitude in his eyes and accepted his thanks with his kiss.
* * *
The watcher leaned heavily on his cane, as he stood across the street from number twenty-three Grosvenor Square. He needed desperately to know what was going on inside Stanthorpe Place.
The tormented man had recently returned from hell only to find that a worse perdition awaited him.
But before he could face his own devils, he had a score to settle here. Except that he needed to know in which direction the settling needed to be done.
This was, in fact, his first visit, but he had come too soon, he realized now. More time would have to pass, more healing would have to take place, before he recovered enough to return.
And return he would.
Integrity and honor would be rewarded and bounders would be made to pay the price.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Gideon got to the nursery to fetch the boys to come and see their baby sister for the first time, Damon and Rafe were playing, but when Rafe looked up, he also looked worried.
Gideon sat in the chair, indicated by Miss Minchip. He especially wanted to give this more reserved of the twins his full attention. Rafferty would notice and feel keenly any distraction on his part. Unlike the happily playing Damon, who rarely saw the little things, because he was so busy flitting from one exciting aspect of life to the next, Rafferty missed nothing.
Gideon lifted Rafe onto his lap. “And what is on your mind, young man?”
“Is Mama sick? She looked sick last night.”
“She did not, Beetle-brain.”
“Bird-wit!”
“Nodcock!”
Gideon chuckled. “Mama is feeling fine this morning, and she wants you both to come and see the surprise we have for you.”
The pronouncement garnered Damon’s immediate and wide-eyed attention as it did Rafferty’s skeptical reserve.
“What kind of surprise?” Rafe asked
Gideon grinned. “You will have to wait and see.”
Damon ran straight to the nursery door. Rafferty shrugged his shoulders and followed cautiously behind.
For once they, neither of them, thought to take their pets.
Walking beside Gideon, Damon raised a seeking hand his way. Gideon was touched and humbled as he took the small hand in his own. The eager child bounced, pulled ahead, swung back and all but stood on his hands, asking questions all the way down the stairs.
Rafe kept to Gideon’s exact pace, giving each and every one of his answers to Damon’s questions his full attention. Gideon could almost see the workings of Rafe’s mind reflected in his expressions, as he measured and weighed those answers.
Sabrina was back in her own bed, washed, dressed, coifed, and smelling of lilacs, and she beamed when she saw them, and held out a tiny bundle, wrapped like a mummy, for their inspection.
“A brother?” Damon asked, excited.
“A sister,” Sabrina said. “Juliana.”
Rafferty shook his head. “Send it back. I really rather have a brother.”
“You have a brother,” Damon said, affronted. “Me.”
“I want one I like.”
Damon shrugged. “Too bad.” He grinned. “I wanted a dog and I got one, so a sister is fine, I guess. Can we bring her to the nursery to play, now?”
Gideon chuckled. “A little soon for that, I think. Juliana will stay with your Mama for a while.”
Juliana screwed up her face for a moment, then she calmed and blew a bubble and everyone laughed.
Damon regarded his mother. “We should show her to the man watching us from across the street. He seems sad and I think Juliana would make him laugh.”
Gideon sobered, but his wife bristled. No, more than that, she shuddered. Her face lost color, her eyes darkened and, yes, she pulled Juliana just the smallest bit closer.
“What the deuce?” Gideon asked, questioning all of it, not the least of which was Damon’s ludicrous tale. “Damon,” he warned. “You are frightening your Mama.”
“Damon,” Sabrina said. “You know what I told you about making up stories.”
“But the man is real, Mama. He watched the house for a long time this morning, and he is bent and old and leans on his cane. He is as ugly like a hideous beast and scary as a ferocious dragon.” Damon growled for good measure.
Rafferty laughed. “What a cork-brained whisker.”
“Is not, clod-pole. He even reminds me of someone.”
“Who?” Rafe scoffed. “The dragon you keep beneath the bed?”
“What do you know, paper-skull?”
“I know I did not see anyone.”
“It was early, mutton-breath. You were still sleeping.”
“Dragon brain.”
“Boys. Enough,” Sabrina said.
At first, Gideon was afraid Veronica had sent someone to harm Sabrina. But while his spiteful former mistress was certainly capable, Damon’s dragon put the unlikelihood into perspective.
Gideon lifted Damon onto the edge of the bed to sit beside Sabrina. “Damon, is something bothering you?”
The boy shook his head, changed his mind mid-way, and nodded. “Sort of.”
Gideon regarded Sabrina, and in a bit of silent communication, he under
stood that she wanted him to continue. “Tell us what is wrong, Damon, and let us help you solve your problem.”
Damon sighed. “I just—”
His new sister sneezed, diverting his attention before he looked back at Gideon. “I need to know what you think Juliana should call you. You know, when she is smart enough to talk and all, ‘cause she might be worried about that.”
“Ah.” Gideon lifted Rafe to perch beside his twin.
Again, Gideon sought and received Sabrina’s approval before responding. “I have considered the problem, myself,” he said.
Damon’s eyes widened. “Honestly?”
“Honestly. I thought, because Juliana never knew your father that she can have no problem calling me Papa, if she wishes.”
He watched their faces. Damon’s expression fell as Rafferty’s tightened.
“Now, if you asked what you and Rafferty might call me,” Gideon went on, skewering Damon’s attention. “I would have to say that the decision must be yours. I have many names. You could call me any of them and perhaps use Uncle before your choice, like Uncle Gideon or Uncle Stanthorpe. I suppose Uncle St. Goddard sounds funny. Though some of my friends just call me Saint. Uncle Saint?”
“That’s silly,” Damon said, tickled.
“It is,” Gideon agreed. “How about if you were to use Papa, rather than Uncle, before any of my names? Papa Gideon; that could work, if you wanted.”
Rafe shrugged.
Damon shook his head, not quite liking it, giving Gideon hope. “I think you had best choose either Papa Gideon or just plain Papa, then,” he said. “Again, whatever you call me will be your choice. You do not need to decide right away. Think about it for a while and decide when it is comfortable for you.”
Without a word, Rafferty slipped off the bed and headed for the door.
“Rafe,” Sabrina called. “Where are you going?”
The pensive boy turned toward his mother, keeping his hand on the knob. “Mincemeat needs me.”
“Let him go,” Gideon said.
Sabrina nodded and Rafe left.
Damon scrambled up to his mother’s side and kissed her. “I gots to go think.” Then he kissed Juliana’s tiny cheek and hopped off the bed. As he passed Gideon, he reached up and tugged his hand, holding it for a moment before he ran out.
Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) Page 13