Undeniable Rogue (The Rogues Club Book One) Read Online Free Page B

his chiseled features from her mind’s eye.
    The man made her think of a deceptively docile dragon, one that would rise up and breathe fire when least expected. Rescue from such a quarter, she suspected, might be as much a hardship as the threat from which one needed delivering.
    No. Neither magnificence nor charm would put food on her table. And no man was worth starving for. All were essentially the same, brutes out to appease their beastly appetites. The gentlemanly manner in which one comported himself before those appetites were satisfied, would in no way resemble his deportment afterward.
    No member of the male persuasion had ever made her doubt that before. Most, simply verified it. Sabrina only wished that one had not come along to make her doubt that truth today, of all days.
    Had the man’s intense eyes seemed almost to smolder when she thought he might kiss her?
    No matter if they did. The future was out of her hands. Which was just as well, for she was in a fair way to making a muddle of it.
    Ah, but his smile...would not be worth the price.
    Her foolish musings were brought to an abrupt, but welcome, halt by the suddenly cavorting antics of her expected child.

    Grateful for deliverance, Sabrina rose to make her way to the nursery, and her purpose for everything.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    The note Gideon had written after a long and sleepless night, and had sent ‘round to the front door only minutes before, arrived in the breakfast room on a silver salver.
    Unlike the others present, Gideon pretended disinterest as Sabrina read her missive, while he made a show of deliberating between poached eggs and boiled.
    “Stanthorpe isn’t coming,” she wailed with more distress than he would have liked or expected, and he dropped his pretense of indifference to rush to her side.
    “Oh, wait,” she said stopping him in his tracks and allowing her guests to release their collective breaths. “He has suggested a proxy wedding, provided I can find someone to stand-in for him.”
    “I would be happy to oblige,” Gideon offered, forestalling Doggett who appeared at the ready to make the offer and ruin Gideon’s plan.
    In the small hours of the morning, Gideon had remained wakeful and aware, body and mind, that he had but to open the connecting door between his bedchamber and hers to find the remarkable Sabrina in her bed. Heady knowledge, that.
    More than once, during those hours, he told himself he was a hundred times a fool, yearning to marry a woman he had just met, especially one big with child. His instant and inexplicable attraction to this woman suggested an immature weakness, a gullibility he thought he had lost a dozen years before.
    He knew better. She was used goods.
    Younger, more malleable women, virgins all, would fall at his feet for a smile, he kept reminding himself.
    He owed Sabrina Whitcomb nothing, whether she had been Hawksworth’s friend or his sister, or whatever else she might have been. Except that he had made a promise to Hawksworth, who had, of course, been dishonest in extracting it. But just because Gideon had not stumbled across many honorable people in his lifetime did not mean he could not be honorable.
    Furthermore, Grandmama was right; it was time he got him a wife and an heir.
    Sabrina Whitcomb eased his soul just by walking into a room. He could not help imagine how she would ease his body as well. Yet simple physical attraction alone had not inspired his fantastical plan.
    Sabrina was a woman who gathered and nurtured strays. And during the dark and lonely hours of the night, he had thought for one weak moment that he just might be among the most lost she would ever encounter, that he had been for more years than he cared to admit.
    No, she did not love him. But neither did he love her. Yes, she calculated his worth in coin of the realm. But why should a wife be any different from anyone else in his life? Sabrina wanted the security that his name and money offered, and he wanted a