Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (39 page)

Bitterness dimmed hope in Gideon’s look. “Ah, yes,” he said with disgust. “And you will not be impoverished again.”

“There is no danger of that. I have eighty-five hundred pounds.”

“Yes, you do.” Gideon sighed. “But let us not forget my situation.”

“Your situation has no bearing on this matter, for I want our bargain done.” Sabrina gave him back the document of deposit. “You said that money was mine to do what will make me happy.”

Gideon nodded. “So, I did.”

“I sold myself to you, Gideon St. Goddard and now I return your money. This negates my sale, does it not? It frees me?”

“Yes,” Gideon said, closing his eyes against the pain of losing her, this agony infinitely more piercing than that from the pistol shot. “You are free to go.”

“Good,” Sabrina said, stepping closer. “If I am free to go, then I am free to stay.”

Gideon could make no sense of her words. She was so close, he could touch her, but if he touched her now, he would never let her go.

He fisted his hands. “But I have lost all my money.”

“You have not.”

For a minute, Gideon thought she knew he had tricked her.

“You have the eighty-five hundred pounds,” she said. “Money enough to keep us, if we are thrifty. I am better at economy than horse racing, you know.”

In Gideon’s heart, joy sought purchase, yet too many questions lingered. “Why did you appear as if you hated me, after I broke into that room? Why did you turn from me, after all was said and done and the runners had taken the villains away? And why, by all that is holy, did you never tell me that horrible man was after you?”

Sabrina turned away from her husband’s probing gaze. “It was so ugly, what you came in on. Previous to my coming here, people like Lowick, sordid, corrupt, are the kind I was forced to associate with daily. Such as them are so far beneath you that I knew you would take a disgust of me once you learned of my life with them.”

“Do I look as if I have taken a disgust of you?” Gideon appeased his deep need to touch her by grazing her chin with his thumb. He wanted to haul her into his arms, but he was still afraid that if he did, really did, she would run screaming from the room, and straight into Hawksworth’s embrace.

“I want our bargain done,” she said again.

“Sabrina, you give me hope and take it away again. Please, you are killing me. If you must bury your knife, bury it to the hilt, now, with one thrust, and put me out of my misery. Tell me what you want of me.”

“I want your purchase of me to be negated. I want for you no longer to own me. I must own myself again, so I may be what I want so badly to be.

“What?” Gideon whispered.

“Your wife.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a gentle man, and the best of Papas. You are good, kind, mine—” Sabrina touched his face. “And I love you.”

Gideon scanned her expression to see if he could read anything, anything, to deny her words, his hope, but he did not, and he was humbled. “You love me.”

“I do, but how can you want me, thinking me a whore and a schemer?”

“It never occurred to me to believe what Lowick said. I know who you are, Sabrina St. Goddard. I know you and I love you. But, Sabrina, tell me he did not hurt you. I have been so worried, but I dared not ask, because I was afraid you would consider the question a judgment on you. It is not.” Gideon cupped her head to pull her near and press his face to hers. “You are so precious to me, I cannot stand the thought that you have been hurt, in any way, and that you must suffer alone, because I am unaware of your pain. Did he hurt you, love?”

Sabrina was so touched, she pressed her lips to his ear before she could speak. “No, Gideon, not on either of the occasions he tried. I fought him off, though I might not have succeeded this time, had you not intervened. But if….”

Gideon straightened from their embrace and moved a curl from her eyes. “If he had hurt you, I would share your pain and we could heal together. Did he, love?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I simply cannot comprehend that you would want me still, if he did.”

“Do you not realize that I have wanted you, any way I could have you, almost from the moment I walked into my kitchen and you threw flour in my face?”

“Any way you could have me?” Sabrina smiled through her tears. “The way you can have me, my lovable, undeniable rogue, is by your side, and in your bed, for as long as we both shall live.”

Gideon kissed his wife the way he ought to have done weeks before, with all the love inside him. With his kiss, he told her how much he treasured her, and with hers, she proved the same. Love turned to passion and passion to desire and—

The world intruded with utter chaos … two excited little boys, and one crying baby, who shattered the moment’s passion, but not the love.

The love, they deepened.

Sabrina and Gideon stepped apart, reluctant but smiling.

Damon and Rafferty whooped and charged Gideon, welcoming Papa home, with kisses, and hugs, and questions, and more hugs, until Sabrina once again sought Gideon’s handkerchief, except that he had to use it on his own eyes first.

Hawksworth stood in the doorway, a screaming baby in his arms. “Help,” he said.

Grinning, Gideon took Juliana, and the babe quieted and gave her Papa her best grin.

Hawksworth chuckled.

Gideon extended his hand to his friend. “I apologize for thinking—”

“And I for doubting—” Hawksworth took Gideon’s hand and clasped it firmly.

Gideon cleared throat. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Thank you. If not for your care on the battlefield, I might not be here.”

“I am glad you did not tell me so when I came in the door tonight.”

The two men shared a smile.

Hawksworth nodded toward the baby. “Sorry to interrupt. I tried to hold them off as long as I could, but as soon as they knew Papa was home….”

Rafe slipped his arm about Gideon’s leg and leaned against it. “Papa, Mincemeat went missing, but we found him sleeping in your bed.”

“With
his
kittens.” Hawksworth said with a wry grin.

“Does that really mean he is a girl?” Damon asked.

Drizzle waddled in, went tail-wagging mad over Gideon and … drizzled, he was so happy.

Hawksworth laughed as he backed out the door. “As much fun as this has been, I must take my leave and allow you to recover.”

Everyone followed him into the hall. “Hawksworth,” Gideon said from the base of the stairs. “You will take the children at some point? You got us into this—for which we will remain eternally grateful—but we would very much appreciate a honey-month.”

“Good God,” his friend said, thunderstruck. “A month?”

Gideon chuckled as he slipped his arm around Sabrina’s waist, and she slipped hers around him, and they started up the stairs.

Hawksworth remained by the open door to watch them, all five, make their undisciplined way up the stairs, happy, chattering, jumping, holding hands. A family.

“Can I have a pony ride, Papa?” he heard Damon ask.

“Lord have mercy,” Sabrina said. “Your Papa has a gunshot wound in his side.”

“From saving me,” Rafe said. “Thank you Papa.”

Gideon ruffled Rafe’s hair. “Anytime, Son.”

“Can we do anything to make you feel better, Papa?”

“Why, yes, Damon, thank you,” Gideon said. “I would like you and your brother and sister to spend some nice, quiet time in the nursery, so I may take a nap...with Mama.”

Excerpt:

The Rogues Club, Book Two

UNFORGETTABLE ROGUE

by

Annette Blair

PROLOGUE

Hawks Ridge at Devil’s Dyke, St. Albans, England, March 1815

Bryceson Wakefield stood a breath away from becoming the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth.

His father gasped. “I failed in life.”

No man should die, or live, Hawk thought, thinking himself a failure. “No Father,” he said, “Do not believe it.”

The old man grasped his hand with more strength than Bryce would have thought possible. “What do I leave behind?” he asked.

‘Me!’
Bryce wanted to shout.
‘You leave me!’
But he said nothing. His sire voiced no pride in his only
child, though neither did he repeat the litany of disappointments. How does one deal with a parent who had not so much as touched one’s hand for all of a lifetime and now clasped it to his heart?

One attempts, Bryce decided, to invoke one last time the smallest spark of kinship. “You leave
me
behind, Father.”

Fervor brightened his sire’s intense gaze. “You, Bryce, you will make me proud?”

God knew he had tried. “I like to think I will.”

Hawk’s hope for approval waned with the weakening of the old man’s grip. “I will. Of course I will. Tell me what I must—”

“Go fight Bonaparte!” Obsession flared in the old man’s eyes for one bright moment. “Bring honor to my name. I would die...proud.”

His sire had gone to his maker.

CHAPTER ONE

London
, September, 1816

Would that he had died as everyone supposed.

Bryceson Wakefield, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, stood at the mouth of hell--not on the field of battle, but in the vestibule of a church, gothic and empty of guests.

There, he saw from afar, his wife, a bride with her bridegroom standing before a priest...and there, Hawk knew that living again just might kill him.

Thrice on his way to this improbable place, he had ordered the carriage turned around, and thrice he had turned it back.

Even now, he wanted to leave, rather than face Alexandra with the dreadful sight of him, scarred and battered by war, but her very presence drew him up that aisle like a beacon in a night-dark storm.

* * *

Smile
, Alexandra Wakefield told herself, as she turned to face her bridegroom, her attention captured, instead, by the bearded derelict making his lone way up the aisle, the tap of his cane a desolate echo in the vaulted church.

His bearing, tall, sturdy and wide-shouldered, as he took the front pew, and the sharp, intense gaze he directed her way, sent a shiver of startled awareness through her. He made her think, absurdly, of her late husband—not the first time Bryce came to mind today—but the brooding stranger watching her, as if he might devour her, looked nothing like.

Bryceson Wakefield, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, a rogue by nature, swarthy, charming and handsome as sin, had enraptured every female who beheld him.