Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (7 page)

Gideon tensed for a moment before gathering his wits about him. “I believe I should be given the same opportunity that you afforded your first husband, to prove myself. I deserve that much, and more. I, at least, can afford to support you, and if I precede you in death, rest assured you will not need to seek support elsewhere. You owe me a husband’s due.”

“I cannot give it to you.” Sabrina rose with the alarming pronouncement, a riot of emotions pummeling her—nervousness, panic...anticipation?

She was so agitated, she took to pacing.

She could not believe they were having this infamous conversation. Whatever happened to sweeping such indelicate issues beneath the proverbial carpet?

“Sabrina.”

Her husband’s determined voice halted her mid-step.

“I
will
sleep in your bed. Beginning tonight.”

“All night? Every night?”

“I promise you will enjoy it.”

“You will not.”

“I will, too.” He stood as well and approached her. “I always enjoy it, and so do the w— Er, so will you.”

“That is the most conceited … so do who?”

“Accept my word. We will both enjoy it.”

“I meant that I did not want—”

“I know what you meant.”

“Oh.” She blushed.

“You would have accepted a tired old man in your bed, but not me? I do believe that might be cause for annulment.”

“Too late for that. You told the strumpet this was your baby.” And why she did not feel the least threatened, even by her bridegroom’s perfectly clear threat, Sabrina could not imagine.

“Oh, no one will believe Ronnie.”

Sabrina quirked a questioning brow.

“Unsavory reputation,” he explained.

“A reputation you gave her.”

Relief flooded Sabrina when he shook his head in denial. “I hate to admit this,” he said, looking abashed, “but she initiated me.”

Relief vanished. “But she is a woman and she seems younger than you.”

“I had to work hard to catch up. I was heartily ashamed of myself.”

Sabrina nearly choked on her sip of water. She coughed to catch her breath while Gideon removed the glass from her hand.

“What if we were to compromise?” she asked when he returned.

“Compromise?” He stepped near enough for her to detect the subtle fragrance of wintergreen amidst other enticing scents of brandy and man. The blend made her head spin and her body tighten.

“I can help you catch up, too,” her seducer whispered, his lips so near her ear, she felt the warmth of his breath to her thrumming center.

If he climbed into her bed tonight, she just might melt on the spot. “About
sleeping
arrangements...”

“Sabrina, I am paying a premium price to bed you.”

She reared back, stunned. “That is a crude way to characterize marriage.”

“Perhaps, but I should receive some compensation for being
rich and convenient
.”

Sabrina groaned and accepted his supportive embrace. This new husband of hers was not the doddering old duke on canvas, but a flesh and blood man, young vibrant and alive. A rare one who stirred her senses and became awed by the movement of her unborn child.

What had she gotten herself into?

In an effort to recreate the extraordinary connection she had experienced the night before, when he touched her burgeoning belly, Sabrina stepped back, took her husband’s big, capable hands and placed them flat against her child’s cocoon. “
Will
you become this child’s first pony?”

When Gideon’s haughty, aristocratic features softened, so, too, did the brittle wall Sabrina had built around her oft-pummeled heart.

“Of course,” he said, with so easy a smile, Sabrina fancied they could both imagine the resultant giggles, and suddenly she dared hope that her bargain of a marriage might not be so unpleasant an arrangement, after all.

No matter her previous experience in marriage or in life, this enigmatic man deserved an agreeable, if not an enthusiastic, bride. Nervous, however, about committing herself to the overwhelmingly physical being before her, and uncertain as to how to phrase her cautious bravado, Sabrina toyed with his cravat. “Your grace—”

“How much of a compromise?” He looked down upon her as if he might discover what beguiling trick she contemplated, as if he might eat her alive.

“We...sleep...in the same bed,” she said, taken aback by the question, when she had been prepared to grant...everything. “But no...touching.”

“We touch,” he quickly countered, and stroked the skin above her bodice, setting word to action and claiming her by branding her. “Everywhere. But no actual—”

“Fine!” she said fast enough to halt the knee-weakening word, but not fast enough to stop anticipation from coursing through her.

Her husband regarded her with knowing eyes, then, as if he could see her nipples tighten beneath her gown and the scurrilous skitterings within her traitorous body. “Fine,” he conceded. “No consummation,
in fact
, until after the baby.”

“Wait a minute,” she said with no small degree of panic. That would be no more than a matter of weeks. Too soon.

Not soon enough.

“You would rather not wait until after the baby?”

“Yes,” she amended. “No. Fine. Until after the baby, then.”

Gideon slid his hands upward, from the mound of her child to rest lightly beneath her breasts, and as she watched, he skimmed the tight, aching nubs with his thumbs, shivering her to her marrow and flooding her with need.

“Now I begin to anticipate our wedding night,” he whispered, nipping her lobe. “Within the allowed perimeters—” He laved and suckled that skittery spot. “There are any number of ways—” He kissed a trail to her lips. “In which to satisfy and amuse ourselves.”

Sabrina shivered again. “There are?” Her voice came out a squeaking croak and she swayed on her feet. “Oh.” She covered her belly with her hand. “I think the babe must be hungry.”

Gideon steadied her and walked her to the door. “I suggest a relaxed wedding dinner and then an early night.”

Perhaps if she seemed tired enough and was agreeable to retiring early, Sabrina thought, denying the sparkle in her rogue bridegroom’s mesmerizing eyes, she might shut herself safely away from him and his alarmingly resolved wedding night.

She might also grow wings and fly, but she would not place a wager on either. Still, she must at least try to turn the tide. “I
am
exhausted.”

“It has been a busy day,” her husband said as he led her into the hall, stopping her before the library door. “Let us finish our discussion later.” He kissed her temple. “In bed.”

* * *

Gideon had no sooner dropped Sabrina at the door to her bedchamber, than she was pacing. She could not believe her ill luck. She had married a man she was more attracted to than to any other in her life, a man she was also more angry with.

Just minutes after Gideon left her, Sabrina opened her door to a knock and found Miss Minchip, come to deliver a wisp of a white lace nightrail.

“I designed this, myself,” she said coming inside, “for your coloring and delicate condition, dear, and our dear Mr. Waredraper stitched it. Is it not splendid?”

How could Sabrina refuse such a gift when she did not even have the heart to refuse to be helped into it when Miss Minchip offered.

The virginal white gown gathered beneath Sabrina’s breasts to drape elegantly, if that were possible, over her blossoming figure. The white lace confection also made her feel the fraud for the first time since she accepted Stanthorpe’s proposal.

“No need for the vapors,” said Miss Minchip, noting her sudden lack of color. “Your bridegroom is not hard on the eyes. The only thing hard on that one will be what counts, mark my words.”

Sabrina gasped and the old woman giggled. “Well, it is not as if you are untouched,” she said, echoing Sabrina’s thoughts. “I would not have made so bold, if that were the case.” The old woman patted Sabrina’s hand and kissed her cheek. “Relax and enjoy.”

“Enjoy?”

“Do not sound so incredulous. Ah, I see. You have never...Well, well, you do have a treat in store.” Miss Minchip grinned and winked as she left, shutting Sabrina inside.

And what could the woman possibly have meant by that cryptic remark? Did she, too, believe, as Gideon seemed to, that enjoyment could be had, even for a woman in the marriage bed? Or outside of marriage, given the fact that the woman had never married, and neither had Gideon, and the both of them certainly seemed to know something Sabrina did not.

Either way, she thought, she had no intention of staying here and becoming a sacrificial lamb to a scapegrace bridegroom who withheld the truth about himself upon meeting her.

Checking the corridor to be certain the place was deserted, Sabrina made her lumbering way down the servants’ stairwell toward the main part of the house.

Rooms that were big and airy by day appeared ghastly and intimidating in the dead of night, she discovered. But she found, finally, that Stanthorpe’s grand library was not among the worst of them.

Illuminated by the silver glow of the moon, the elegant room, with the smell of beeswax and lemon-polished wood, old books and fresh flowers, radiated a welcoming quality even now.

Deciding to peruse the books closest to the moonlight streaming through the big bow window, Sabrina placed her candle on a table by the door.

She hoped that by the time she went back upstairs, the Duke would have given up waiting for her and retired to his own bedchamber.

There were hundreds of books to peruse and she took her time, seeking a title to suit her mood. Nothing so gothic as Mrs. Radcliffe’s
Mysteries of Udolpho
, but something more like Austen’s recent work. Perhaps the story of an aristocratic bridegroom and the apprehensive bride with whom he falls madly and irrevocably in love.

Sabrina bit her lip on a surge of grief at the foolish sentiment, but much to her consternation, the banked emotion escaped as something of a sob.

Blast it, she must remain strong.

* * *

When Gideon knocked on the door adjoining his bedchamber with his bride’s, he received no responding answer. “Sabrina?” he called. “Are you ready for— May I enter?”

He listened carefully, for at least the sound of a scuffle that might reveal her as unprepared to receive him as yet, but he heard nothing.

“Sabrina, are you in there?” Another minute of silence and Gideon opened the door...only to come face to face with a sea of black pitch.

After he went back to his bedchamber for a candle, he illuminated his bride’s maddeningly-empty chamber. “Where the devil?”

Taking up the candle, while attempting to keep his composure, Gideon set out to spend his wedding night on a bloody foolish bedtime chase for his new and decidedly-difficult non-virgin bride.

Truth to tell, the mettle it took for her to flee almost made him like her the more. It certainly added a degree of respect to his estimation of her. Frustration as well, not to mention his anticipation of rising to the challenge she presented. But he should be angry.

He was angry damn it. He was furious. Where the devil had she run off to?