Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) (31 page)

When Bilbury returned for the tray, Gideon asked him to fetch Sabrina.

“I am sorry, your grace,” he said nearly an hour later. “But we cannot seem to locate the Duchess.”

“Did you look in the nursery?”

“Of course, your grace.”

“In the kitchen?”

“We looked everywhere, your grace. Your wife is nowhere on the premises.”

“Nowhere?” Gideon said. “She has to be somewhere. Wait. What day is this?”

“It is the third of February, your grace, in the year of our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Sixt—”

“Stuff it.” Gideon jumped from the bed. “And fetch my clothes.”

Bilbury offered the pantaloons he had already brought in. “But your grace—”

“The St. Eustace Winter Fair begins today, does it not?” Gideon tugged his pantaloons from his disapproving valet’s reluctant grasp.

“Er, yes, your grace. It does begin today.”

“Have my carriage brought around. Hurry, Man.”

* * *

By the time Gideon’s carriage arrived in Chelsea, it was early afternoon and obvious from the cheering crowd that the race had already begun.

Gideon jumped from the conveyance, blocked on all sides by farm animals, farmers and other assorted fair fanciers. He fought his way amid the throng, weaving through a score of gaily decorated booths and tents selling every item from silk gloves to baby pigs.

He denied an opportunity to buy a manure spreader and bypassed a miracle elixir, advertising a cure for ailments ranging from apoplexy to temper tantrums. “Too bad they do not have one for headstrong wives,” he muttered.

He almost cut through an abandoned cockfight ring, until he saw that it was littered with the carcasses of birds that looked to have exploded.

In a huge open ale tent, a table full of red-faced merrymakers, back-teeth-awash, invited him in for a nip. He damned near joined them.

At a Far-Eastern pavilion, a bearded lady propositioned him, stopping him in his tracks. Gideon apologized and told her that he had enough problems, thank you very much, with the woman he already had.

By the time he made it to the front of the spectators, he saw Deviltry, clear as day, pass a length ahead of the rest.

Gideon could not moderate his grin, no matter how angry he tried to be.

“Two more times around the bell course,” he heard the announcer say.

His palms sweat and his knees knocked. Gideon had never been so worried. If Sabrina got out of this alive, he was going to have to beat her, after he assured himself she had not broken anything but his trust.

The runners passed again. Only one more time around—he just might make it.

A rider was down. Damn.

Gideon charged onto the course, nearly getting himself trampled, but he fell and rolled, just in time, and neither horse nor rider was forced to break stride.

When he reached the felled rider, the injured man was cursing a blue streak, accusing the race commissioners of allowing a professional jockey on the course with a blasted Arabian.

Sabrina. They thought Sabrina was a professional. “I’ll be—”

The race had ended, the spectators cheering and crowding ‘round the winner.

Gideon elbowed his way through. Sabrina sat atop a snorting Deviltry, grinning with pride, laughing, congratulating Deviltry, until she saw him.

When he grabbed her by the waist and hauled her to the ground, she yelped. Then he crushed her in his embrace and kissed her dizzy.

The crowd went dead silent. The Duke of Stanthorpe had just kissed his boy jockey before the entire world and his brother.

Someone tapped Sabrina on the back, stealing her attention from the fiery exhibition she and Gideon had just presented. She turned to accept the five-thousand pound purse and caught sight of Homer Lowick, grinning, not ten feet away.

Amidst the chaos of happy congratulations, the horrible little man tipped his hat and made a cutting motion with a finger across his neck.

Sabrina tried not to faint or to run. She turned away, but stood her ground, glad now that Gideon had come, glad to have his supporting arm around her.

In addition to the race purse, she received an additional thirty-five hundred pounds from the bet she had Doggett place. When Doggett brought her the second purse, Gideon all but growled at the man, likely for abetting her in this jaunt. Then her husband had the gall to ask Doggett to bring Deviltry home for them.

Through it all, Sabrina felt sick, she was so worried. There remained no doubt in her mind any longer. Homer Lowick knew where to find her and who to find her with. He was closing in and she would be forced to run again or she would have no choice but to stand and face her enemy.

After the race crowd finally thinned, they began to make their silent way back toward Gideon’s carriage. But it was getting late, so Gideon stopped to purchase tup’ney pies and found a bench where they could sit and eat them.

“Tell me,” he said, breaking the tense silence. “Did our daughter receive any sustenance today?”

“I expressed my milk so Miss Minchip could bottle feed her. If I was not back by now, she was going to feed her pap. Do not worry. Juliana is not at home starving.”

“I am pleased to hear it.”

And that was the end of their dinner conversation.

By the time Gideon’s driver was able to move the carriage from its location amid the merrymakers, dusk had just begun to paint the horizon with wild streaks of pinks and grays.

They rode home in silence as well, on opposite seats in the closed carriage, facing each other, but not.

Gideon was furious. Sabrina knew that. She could still see the tic working in his cheek. Yet, he had kissed her. Why?

She could not bear his silence, because guilt rode her. She could not bear her own silence, because she kept seeing Lowick’s threatening action in her mind’s eye.

“When it was clear that you wanted to beat me, why did you kiss me, instead?”

“To keep from beating you.”

“Oh.”

He turned from his absorption in the passing scenery to regard her. “I thought at first that
you
had fallen and broken your neck, but by the time I saw you, I had already discovered the injured to be a different rider. I was grateful enough that you were spared to need to kiss you.”

Thunderclouds formed on his brow and the timbre of his voice rose an octave. “But I need to beat you as well, because you
could have been
the rider who was injured. Damn it, Sabrina, you could have been killed!”

“Is the fallen rider badly hurt?”

“Not as badly as you will be when I am finished with you.”

“Oh.”

“Your vocabulary seems to have deserted you.”

“I believe I dropped it somewhere near the finish line...when I spotted your face in the crowd.”

“And trampled it underfoot, like the years you took from my life with that stunt.” Gideon leaned his head against the squabs and closed his eyes. “God, Sabrina, I would never have forgiven myself, if something had happened to you.”

“Why? I made the choice. Why would you blame yourself?”

He regarded her as if she had grown an extra head. “Because I told Hawksworth I would care for and protect you. And if you were injured, I would have failed to honor that promise.”

“Oh. I thought, perhaps, you might have had...a different reason.”

“Like?”

“Me.”

Gideon reached for her and hauled her across the carriage to his lap. “I had many very good reasons,” he said, as he opened his mouth over hers and kissed her in such a way as to leave her with no doubt of his feelings on the matter.

“Because you like me?” she asked with a satisfied smile when he allowed her up for air.

“Hoyden,” he said kissing her again. “Vixen.” Another kiss.
“Enfant terrible.”

“I am not a child,” she snapped, pulling away and crossing her arms.

He stroked her breast, and she moved to accommodate his possession, sliding back into his embrace.

“Point taken. You are not a child.”

In an unprecedented move, Sabrina slipped her hand inside the flap on his tightening pantaloons, garnering an oath from her husband that seemed less a curse and more an exclamation of appreciation.

The carriage came to a sudden stop.

Gideon swore as the door opened, nearly on the instant.

Grandmama stood on the walk tapping her foot, her annoyed countenance still visible in the smoky light of full dusk. “Where the devil have you two been. The house is all in an uproar.”

Having turned to present her back to the open door, not that anyone could see much in the dark interior, Sabrina tried to slip her hand from the very-full front of her husband’s breeches.

“Better stay behind a minute,” she whispered before stepping down and chuckling at the growl he returned.

She walked Grandmama to the steps to give her husband a chance to gather his wits about him and emerge from the carriage without embarrassing himself. “To what do we owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit?” she asked his grandmother.

“To my granddaughter riding in a race in Chelsea and going missing for all of a day. I did not think you had windmills in your head, girl. What was this racing nonsense all about?”

“Just a lark, says Gideon. He thinks I am an
enfant terrible
, hoping that my husband will take some notice of me.”

“Take notice of you?” Grandmama said. “That will not wash. That boy fair trips over himself every time you walk into a room.”

“Does he?”

“Lovesick fool.”

“Gideon? Oh, I do not think so.”

“Same as you. Calf-eyed the two of you and everybody knows it but you. Need to face the facts, my girl.”

Grandmama kissed her cheek. “Minchip sent for me a while ago, all in a dither. But now that you two are back, I will be on my way, so you may finish what you started in the carriage.”

Sabrina opened her mouth...and closed it again.

Grandmama left chuckling, and when she passed by her grandson, she thwhacked him with her cane.

“Ouch.” He rubbed his arm. “What did you do that for?”

“Good measure.” She shook her head. “You beef-witted looby.”

“A looby? Me?” Gideon was still watching his grandmother climb into her carriage when he reached his wife at the door. “What got into her?”

Sabrina sighed. “I suppose wisdom would be too much to hope for.”

“What? Why was she here? Why is she leaving?”

“So we can finish what we started in the carriage.”

“The devil you say?”

“Meet you in your bedchamber in five minutes.”

* * *

When they met upstairs, half an hour later, after having checked on all their sleeping offspring, Sabrina found herself remembering the looks on the faces of the people in the crowd when Gideon hauled her off her horse and kissed her.