Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (28 page)

Back upstairs, outside Sabrina’s bedchamber door, despite the frustration raging inside him, Gideon wanted nothing more than to slip into bed beside her, place his arms around her, and close his eyes.

Even in sleep, she soothed him. Giving into his desire, he entered her bedchamber and returned to her bed.

It seemed as if he had no sooner settled against her, than Damon was tugging his arm. “Papa, Rafferty is afraid of the storm and I cannot—I mean Rafe cannot wake Miss Minchip.”

“I am coming, Sweet,” Sabrina said, sitting up, all but talking in her sleep.

“Stay,” Gideon told her, urging her back down. “Go back to sleep. I am still awake. I will see to Rafe’s fears.”

“Mmm, thank—” That fast, Sabrina slipped back into the waiting arms of Morpheus.

Gideon rose, slipped into his pantaloons and dressing gown, without lighting a candle, and lifted Damon into his arms to take him back up to the nursery.

His head on Gideon’s shoulder, the winsome lad sighed. “Can I have a pony ride back?”

Gideon chuckled. “Not up the stairs, you cannot. Despite indications to the contrary, I am not so mighty a steed as you suppose.”

Some time later, Sabrina awoke to her daughter’s demands for nourishment and remembered Damon coming to them afraid of the storm.

“Your brother must have come down an hour or more ago,” she told Juliana as she nursed. “I wonder what happened to your Papa?”

Papa
, Sabrina thought, remembering Gideon’s face just this morning when Rafe had called him that for the first time. How like a rogue,
her
rogue, to charm her children and claim them for himself, one by one.

When he had returned earlier, after their quarrel, of sorts, though they had not spoken, he had seemed his roguish self again. He had sighed as if in contentment and become aroused just holding her in his arms, as if nothing had happened.

And so it had not. Quite. An argument, but not. Only with Gideon could she imagine the like. Only with him could she emerge physically unscathed, yet emotionally bereft, mourning the loss of something she could not seem to wrap her mind around. “Even now, I cannot say what it is,” she told Juliana.

When the babe finished nursing, Sabrina changed her and carried her upstairs to the nursery to check on the men in their lives.

And there she found them, all in one bed, Gideon on his back in the center, snoring and snorting like the famous
Puffing Billy
Locomotive, his long, graceful, bare feet hanging off the bed’s bottom edge, a boy clutched in each arm.

Drizzle slept between Gideon’s legs, Mincemeat sprawled draped across his chest. Animals always knew the difference between a good man and a dangerous one, Sabrina thought. Like her boys knew.

“Papa is protecting us from the thunder,” Damon said softly, when she got close.

“I think his snores scare the thunder away,” Rafe added.

Sabrina chuckled. “Do you want me to stay, too?”

“No,” her twins said in unison.

“Sleep well, then,” she whispered, kissing all three foreheads, not certain how she felt about not being needed by her sons. But she did know of a sudden how she felt about this remarkable new Papa of theirs.

She cared. And the knowledge frightened her.

She cared a great deal more than she wanted to.

Somewhere along the way, while she worried about Lowick and protected her children, had she become so distracted that she had forgotten to protect her heart?

Had she already lost her heart to her husband without even realizing it?  

God help her, if she did. God help them all.

As the storm howled without, and Sabrina fretted within, and everyone else at Stanthorpe Place slept, a man with a gold hoop in his ear, and another with a mustache, broke into Gideon’s study.

“Lookee here, I found me a silver flask. Ah, and an ivory letter opener.” While one thief hid his baubles on his person, his crony dragged out a drawer and dropped it on the floor. Then he pulled out another. “That Doggett is a smart one, getting himself perched in this fancy nest.”

“Not smart enough. Are Chinese snuff bottles worth anything?”

“Some, take it anyway.”

Elsewhere in the room, they discovered and took a venetian glass inkwell, a mother of pearl card case and a tortoiseshell snuff box in the shape of a shoe.

* * *

For the first time in weeks, the watcher stood across the street from number twenty three Grosvenor Square.

He was strong again, nearly as strong as he used to be, though not nearly so fine. He was up to learning what he must, and setting everything to rights.

So far, he had learned nothing but the fact that Stanthorpe had too many people coming and going at odd hours of the night.

Right now, if he were capable of walking normally, he would walk right up to the door and knock. To the devil with the consequences.

If he were capable.

Images of the reason he was not, filled the watcher’s head with ugliness and horror, with the things men are forced to do, terrible things that changed their lives forever. Acts that ruin them, and often through no fault of their own, the innocents those men touch, and corrupt, in the doing.

Nevertheless, someone always had to pay.

Sometimes men were forced to act. Take matters into their own hands. More often than not, the women suffered.

Some women were forced to suffer. He knew that, too.

They were bystanders, pawns, playthings.

And some women just needed to be taught a lesson.

One in particular came to mind.

* * *

Sabrina tossed in turmoil half the night, only sleeping near dawn, but deeply and dreamlessly. The following morning, in the event Gideon had returned to his rooms and dressed before she woke, she went to his study to seek him.

He was not there, but he surely had been. Sabrina shook her head at the mess he left behind.

For the first time since she had known him, Gideon must actually have lost his temper. He certainly seemed angry the night before, close to fury when he left her. Now the results lay scattered undeniably before her. ‘Twas a tantrum of formidable proportions by the looks of the place.

In the process of straightening the disorder, Sabrina found, beneath a small, upended, unvarnished inner-drawer, a scrap of paper that intrigued her. Folded numerous times into very small squares, the scrap fit the small drawer perfectly.

She located the inner drawer’s resting place, behind a visible outer drawer, and recognized the small compartment as a secret drawer. This document had been secreted away, never to see the light of day.

So of course Sabrina unfolded the document and spread it out before her.

Even after reading it twice, she did not know what to make of it.

The official-looking certificate almost appeared...If she did not know better— Sabrina sat. Had Gideon lost his fortune on the stock exchange? The puzzling record before her certainly made the possibility appear fact. If so, he must be frantic with worry.

Could this be the prize Lowick sought? If, indeed, it had been Lowick who broke in and struck poor Doggett before they returned from Christmas at Grandmama’s house.

Homer Lowick devoured the vulnerable. And losing one’s fortune certainly made a man vulnerable. Poverty could turn Gideon into prey, rather than protector. It could make him
appear
weak, rather than strong.

“Poor Gideon.”

Sabrina found it difficult to imagine Gideon St. Goddard, Duke of Stanthorpe, radiating anything less than absolute strength, control and power. Weakness simply did not suit his nature, yet the document clearly revealed—

No wonder his ire, nay his frustration, of the night before. No wonder—

Poor Gideon, did she say?

Drat her for losing her focus. She should be worried about his inability to support her and the children, not about his feelings.

Rogues, she must remember, experienced nothing so mundane as feelings. For the sake of her children, she should leave Stanthorpe Place and seek more able protection. But as long as her children had a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, how could she leave Gideon, when he must need someone, more than ever?

Besides, he had become everything to the children.

Sabrina went back upstairs, her mind filled with her husband’s problems. She was pacing his bedchamber considering those problems when he returned.

In nothing but his breeches and open dressing gown, her sleep-mussed husband looked as if he had run all the way down the stairs. His cheeks rosy, his brows were furrowed with...embarrassment? Chagrin was clearly writ there, as well.

Sabrina’s imagination painted a picture of what might have taken place upstairs in the nursery, and she grinned. “Such a lecherous rogue you look. Do not say that you faced Miss Minchip in your morning dishabille and frightened her witless.”

“Faced her? Frightened her? I was sound asleep, thank you very much, my dressing gown open, if you please. ’Twas she who frightened me with her foolish screams.” He ran a hand through his sleep-tossed locks. “I woke and scurried away like a thief in my own house.”

“My poor cross bear,” Sabrina said, talking baby talk, stroking the night’s growth of beard on his cheek. “Did the nasty old nanny scare you?”

For half a minute, the frown on Gideon’s brow became more pronounced. And just when his eyes lit, and he became focused on the fact that she was playing, and he reached for her, his valet stepped into the bedchamber, and made to back out as fast.

“His grace will not need you today, Bilbury,” Sabrina said, turning to the valet. “I will handle his morning ablutions, myself. Will you just see that a tub of hot water is readied in his dressing room?”

“Very good, your grace.”

“Thank you, Bilbury.”

Gideon’s grin appeared. “
You
will see to my morning ablutions? This becomes intriguing. To what do I owe the pleasure of your undivided attention?”

Gideon began to advance and Sabrina allowed him to catch her.

When he had her in his clutches, she slipped his dressing gown from his shoulders. “I simply want to thank you for protecting the boys from the storm, last night.”

“I should, perhaps, point out that I was given little choice in the matter. You were like to sleep-walk your way out the front door.”

Sabrina grimaced. “Well, I know that you did not.” She ran her hands over his chest, allowing herself to absorb and enjoy the feel of his skin against her palms, of his chest hair, silky, not coarse, as she used to think, enticing and strangely arousing as it slid between her eager fingers.

She found a hidden nubbin, teased it with her finger, then her tongue, as he often did to her, and a low growl emerged from Gideon’s throat. By the time she looked up, he was opening his mouth over hers, bending her backward in his arms.

Afraid she would fall, Sabrina grasped him tighter, but he arranged to have them land on his bed, him on top, smiling victoriously down at her.

They had never come together in broad daylight. She had never wanted, in the true sense, to experience
almost everything
with him when she was alert and awake, and accountable to herself for her actions.