Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One)

UNDENIABLE ROGUE

by

Annette Blair

www.annetteblair.com

https://www.facebook.com/annette.blair.author

Copyright:

First published in paperback by Kensington Publishing

Copyright 2002, 2011 by Annette Blair

Published by Annette Blair, December 30, 2011

E-book Cover Copyright 2011
Calista
Taylor,
www.calistataylor.com

Please Note:

All rights reserved.

This is a historical work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and establishments is entirely coincidental.

Dedication:

To Robbie-Lynn,

Curious from the start,

Who taught us the meaning of love.

To Scott,

A surprise from the start,

Who taught us the meaning of laughter.

I adored you when you were tiny and cuddly

And toddling and questioning and growing

But most of all, I love and respect

The people you have become.

For every precious moment, I thank you.

The Rogues Club, Book One

UNDENIABLE ROGUE

by Annette Blair

Prologue

Military Encampment

Night before the Battle of Waterloo

June 17, 1815

“Stare death down, Rogues, and take an oath to The Club.”

“The Rogues Club,” said the men.

Gideon St. Goddard cleared his throat. “Those of us blessed and cursed to survive, and remember, hereby vow to protect the families of those here, now, who go to their just rewards with the dawn.”

“Aye,” they all repeated.

Gideon nodded and read from the parchment they had composed together. “Every dead rogue’s widow, mother, sister, brother, ward, will be blessed with a family of rogues who provide for them. Every corporeal need—food, shelter, warmth against the cold, and when due: a spouse, an education or a living.”

“Aye.” The second response came stronger and held more conviction.

“Raise your flasks,” Gideon said. “And repeat after me. ‘We the members of The Rogues Club, so do vow.’”

After the vow, and a drink to seal it, cheers resounded and hands were shaken, so it hardly seemed possible that in a few hours any of them might meet their maker.

Soon, the men began to talk among themselves, exchanging information about their families, and Hawksworth approached him.

June 18, 1815

After Bonaparte’s Defeat

My dear Sabrina, if you read this, I have passed, yet the sun shines for me now that you are settled. As I vowed, I found for you a husband. With time running out, I exacted from him what amounts to a deathbed promise to wed and protect you.

He is the new Duke of Stanthorpe, honorable, and wealthy beyond your needs. Tell him of your enemy, I implore you, for he will help.

CHAPTER ONE

London
, November 3, 1815

By this time tomorrow, he would be wed.

Gideon St. Goddard, Duke of Stanthorpe, was having second thoughts. Though he approached his Grosvenor Square home for the first time in months, more dread than anticipation filled him, for beyond the black enameled door of number twenty three, his mystery bride awaited.

With a curse for fate and a tug on Deviltry’s reigns, Gideon slowed his pace, wishing the house stood empty of all but his few loyal retainers. Loyal—odd choice of words, especially for him. But, yes, they were, because he paid them well to be so.

Loyalty, constancy, fidelity; he did not possess the natural capacity to inspire those virtues, and he did not need another upon whom to test that ability and fail.

He did not
need
anyone.

Stanthorpe Place
, tall, bright white and inviting in the gentle winter sun, was not his best nor his biggest home. But Gideon had chosen it to house the woman he had agreed sight-unseen to marry, because of its proximity to the pleasures of London. If worse came to worse and he found himself leg-shackled to an antidote, he could always send her to the country to rusticate and bear his progeny, while he remained in town.

The realization that he need not bother with her more than once or twice a year might actually serve to relieve his anxiety, if the specter of his parents’ almost-perfect marriage did not crook its come-hither finger so beguilingly.

At least, Grandmama was pleased about his marriage. After his estranged brother’s scurrilous and untimely demise, her letter informing him of his unexpected ascendancy to the title had caught up with him in Belgium on the eve of battle. Even now, the Grande Dame believed that her letter insisting he “Hie thee home and get thee a bride,” rather than the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, had ultimately brought him back to England.

In actuality, her promise to make him her heir, if he did so, had more to do with it than her insistence, that and the mighty and mercurial hand of fate.

His coffers, while never empty, always needed topping-off. His first bride—though she never got quite that far—ran off with a wealthier bridegroom, reminding him that as far as money was concerned, one could never have enough. And Miss Whitcomb, according to her brother, needed a husband to protect her from a life of indigence. “So,” he told himself as he made his way ‘round to the mews, “‘tis all for the best.”

Nevertheless, as he left Deviltry to the eager stable-lad’s tender ministrations, Gideon’s heart beat like a drummer-boy’s timorous tattoo.

In an effort to divest himself of travel grime and don his best armor before meeting his intended, Gideon chose the service entrance so he could take the backstairs to his bedchamber.

In the kitchen, Cook was not to be found but a luscious wench looking set to pup shrieked when she saw him.

Arrested by an eerie sense of recognition, though he had never seen her before in his life, Gideon did not duck fast enough to evade the flour she tossed in guileless self-defense. Reduced to dusty ignobility, he bit off an oath that turned into a sneeze, and added spirited to luscious in his estimation of her.

Dusting flour from his shoulders, Gideon gave his attacker a slow sweeping perusal. Judging by the manner, if not the style, of her dress, the nymph was no servant. Round in all the right places, and then some, she obviously belonged to someone else. But who? And what was she doing in his kitchen?

“Where the devi—” A second sneeze diluted his vexation, to the point that Gideon sighed and gave it up. “Where is Cook?”

His attacker’s miffed mien turned sympathetic. “Oh, you must be hungry.”

Yes, he was, suddenly and inexplicably, but not for food, he decided, chagrined over his reaction to her. He did not normally lust after women in her interesting condition, though there had been that one incredible time...

Gideon cleared his throat. “And you are?”

He must appear as wide-eyed and assessing as she, he mused, even as he tumbled headlong into the bottomless depths of the most amazing violet eyes he had ever beheld. Sultry. Beguiling.

“S-Sabrina,” she said when the silence stretched nearly to snapping.

Shaken by the unlikely coincidence, Gideon waited without breath for her last name.

“Whitcomb. Sabrina Whitcomb.”

For the first time since the Battle of Waterloo, Gideon’s knees turned to jelly.

Behold his bride.

At first thought, the notion enticed, almost as much as it appalled. Yet he knew instinctively that if he took this woman to wife, his solitary existence would end in flames, for she burned bright and alive, and had the power to singe if he got too close.