Page 13 of Undoubtedly Reckless (Rebel by Night #2)

Cheapside Date

Sabina didn’t know what to say. Then she remembered herself and shoved the knife—Roland’s knife—back into her sleeve.

Roland looked delicious. He was dressed beautifully for an evening out, from his brushed blue coat to the hair he clubbed back, refusing all powder. He must have been on the way to his club. She wanted to touch him.

“What are you doing here?”

Sabina stuttered. She looked around and started moving to not draw attention. Roland fell into step beside her.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

Roland inquired, ignoring her question.

“Back to Mayfair. You shouldn’t be here,”

Sabina said in a low voice. She was dressed in shabby if respectable men’s clothes. They were starkly mismatched companions.

“Neither should you,”

Roland replied. “No one should be in Cheapside at this time if they can help it.”

“I had to post a letter,”

Sabina explained.

“You could have posted the letter from the duke’s house. In the daytime. Wearing a dress.”

“Roland, this is my private affair. I am so sorry, I must hurry back to the duke’s residence. I bid you good night.”

Sabina bobbed a quick curtsey before realizing she was dressed as a man.

“Have you eaten?”

Roland asked, again ignoring her attempt to leave him.

“I beg pardon?”

Sabina asked blankly.

“No, I don’t think you do. Are you hungry? There’s a good pub a few blocks from here.”

“It’s almost midnight.”

“‘Tis an hour ‘til. Come, Sabina, let us have a good meal and then I’ll see you home.”

Roland nodded in a direction she had not considered.

She hesitated. She wavered.

She could not resist.

“Don’t interrogate me,”

Sabina warned. “I won’t answer.”

“I would never,”

Roland replied seriously, then led the way as he would with a friend.

Sabina hesitated but a moment before following. It was one meal. What could one meal hurt?

Soon they were ensconced in a corner table, where they could observe the entire room. Sabina discreetly drank in the scene, from the loud chatter to the scent of unwashed bodies and delicious food and the bustle of the servers. No one looked at them. She was invisible, and unfettered.

Roland gave their orders, which was whatever the pub was serving this evening, and Sabina tried not to jump when the plate of fish pie and crisp potatoes abruptly appeared in front of her. A small beer appeared at her elbow, along with a flagon of vinegar.

Sabina looked at their table and around the tavern. This is what being normal must be like. She was sitting at a table in London, about to have supper with a charming companion. All around her was life, people laughing, squabbling, chatting amiably. How marvelous. How foreign.

Roland waited for her to start and she almost laughed at his courtesy when they were observing an arm-wrestling contest not three tables over.

Then she attempted to eat like a man when she wanted to shove the delicious fish pie into her mouth whole. Finishing-school manners would not do in Cheapside, but the fare was almost better than what she could serve.

She had not dined in a pub for years and she missed it. This was a better venue than most and she suddenly missed Uncle Galfrid and Aunt Idonia. Roland had not spoken but the silence was not unbearable. It was a companionable silence, like what they once had in Hornsea so long ago. He was taking care of her again, Sabina noted.

“Every year I post a letter,”

Sabina offered Roland. He looked up and pushed his empty plate away, his attention on her. “I can be declared dead after ten years of silence so I post a letter every year to prove that I am alive. That way my stepfather cannot take control of my father’s affairs, which includes my inheritance.”

Roland motioned to a boy and two coffees appeared in front of them.

“I can help you, Sabina,”

Roland said quietly.

“You have already saved me so many times, Roland,”

she replied softly. “My stepfather is dangerous.”

“So am I,”

Roland said, and he looked very affronted when she snorted. His expression caused her to chuckle, belatedly remembering to keep her guffaw to a manly chuff.

“You are, I know you are, I’ve seen you fight, but the look on your face, Roland,”

she chortled. “You have my gratitude, but this is my responsibility. I have borne it for ten years, there are only a few months left before I am twenty-five. Then I will contact my lawyers and finish this.”

She observed the mulish look on his face and was undeterred.

“You will call on me if you need assistance,”

Roland finally insisted.

“Naturally,”

she assured him. She would do no such thing but offered the lie while looking straight into his eyes. They finished their coffee just as the tavern became louder and drunker.

“Time to go,”

Roland said, pushing back. “This would have been an excellent night for your fake spectacles. How on earth did you think anyone would look at your face and think you were a man, I don’t know.”

“It’s London. No one looks up at people’s faces here,”

she replied and followed him out into the streets of Cheapside. Even with the smell and odd piles she needed to step around and the possibility of being robbed, this was a stolen moment of pleasure.

Sabina didn’t want to go back to the duke’s house. Even in her mind, she didn’t call it home, for she had lost her home to a fire in Hornsea. Now, though, this moment in time, she was free. Everyone at the duke’s house thought her abed. For one night, she was let loose from her burdens. She trusted Roland to bring her home safely and on time.

Neither of them rushed to seek a cab, enjoying the brisk walk through an oddly snowless December night. Abruptly, Sabina stopped, her head cocked.

“Oh, listen to that,”

Sabina said.

****

Roland smiled down at her bright face. He heard the music too, buskers being common in this part of Cheapside.

“Don’t tell me you’re interested in some second-rate musician presenting a third-rate opera?”

Roland asked.

“It’s not a third-rate opera, it’s your opera,”

Sabina smiled. “Rinaldo.”

Roland groaned.

“God save me from French epics. A few minutes and then we must be off. I think I smell snow in the air. Mustn’t get caught in bad weather,”

Roland warned.

“Music is never a waste of time,”

Sabina said. “And you actually smell horse droppings but I’ll allow you your delusions.”

They moved closer to the soulful violin just as a surprisingly good soprano launched into, “Lascia ch’io pianga.”

“That violinist is quite good,”

Sabina whispered to Roland. “The soprano is drowning him out. If only they had a whole symphony. Once I heard the Chevalier De St. George conduct in Paris and I was never the same.”

Roland assessed her closely. The privilege of hearing an orchestra in Paris was not a cheap delight. Again he wondered who she was, and again he was certain she had never been a whore.

“Come with me,”

Sabina said abruptly and grabbed Roland’s hand.

Only slightly alarmed, Roland let himself be led through some foul alleys and up some slippery steps, then through a building. He was almost certain Sabina had never been here before but she took the turns and stairs with a determination he dare not forestall.

Then, they exited a door onto a roof. Roland picked up the thread of the music again, clear and sweet.

Roland followed his lady to the edge of the roof and watched her take in the song as the notes floated upward into the fetid night air.

“Why up here?”

Roland asked her.

“The music rises and up here, you can feel like you’re alone above the clouds, carried away by waves of heaven.”

Sabina tilted her head to the notes. The woman was not intent on seduction, Roland knew that in his bones. Nonetheless, she was doing a damn fine job of it.

“Have you been to the theater since you’ve been in town?” he asked.

“Oh, no, the duke is not a music lover, so we do not attend, which is a shame. A good orchestra raging into a symphony is my weakness,”

Sabina said.

Suddenly, he wished to see her face at the opera. He wanted her gowned in velvet, only to be concerned with the spectacle in front of her, and not inheritances or her own safety. This is not the life she was meant to lead.

****

She blamed the music. The music made her foolish

Sabina could not understand the words but she felt the music. It did things to her, made her feel things that were unwise.

But it was after dark in London and no one could tell her what to do. Sabina turned and looked up at Roland’s face. He was not a handsome man but he had always been so attractive to her, from that stubborn jaw to the thoughtful eyes that looked at her searchingly.

“Would you be terribly affronted if I kissed you?”

she asked.

“You didn’t ask the time before.”

He grinned, reaching for her.

“Are you going to make me apologize?”

Sabina responded, enjoying his hands on her. She loved his hands. He could repair her windows, handle a gun, guide a horse, hold her steady.

“No, I beg you to do it again.”

“I’m not very good at it,”

Sabina warned, placing her hands on his chest.

“Well, then I think you should get some practice.”

Roland bent his head down to her lips. “I humbly offer myself as a test subject.”

Sabina went up on her toes to meet his lips and smiled as they kissed. This was so right, possibly the only thing in her life that was good and hers. She opened her lips and touched her tongue to his lips, letting herself into his mouth with a delight that bordered on joy.

She heard his breathing and remembered to breathe herself as she explored the ways they could kiss. Her arms found their way around his neck and he had backed her to a stone block that she had not seen before on the roof.

It wasn’t enough. Sabina couldn’t help the frustrated noise that came from her and she slid a hand down to cup the erection bulging the front of his breeches.

“Lord, Sabina, have mercy, woman.”

Roland broke away from her to gasp.

“I need you,”

she breathed heavily. “I need this.”

“I’m not going to take you on a bloody roof,”

Roland said, then pulled her in for another drugging kiss.

“Then I’ll take you.”

Sabina worked at his breeches and had them undone before he knew it. She knew he wanted her and when she finally released his cock into her eager hands, his hiss of pleasure was all the answer she needed.

And he was a lovely wonder, heavy and warm in her hands. Sabina grinned in delight as she stroked him and palmed his heavy balls. She could not articulate why touching him so intimately satisfied her, but then she saw the pained wonder on his face and it didn’t matter. Such a simple thing, to touch a man and see him so undone.

“No, God, no, Sabina, not like this,”

Roland grunted and abruptly spun her around.

“Don’t tell me what I want,”

Sabina snapped, unhappy at being deprived of such a pleasant diversion. Then she felt his hands at the flap of her breeches and responded by reaching behind her for him.

When Roland slid his hand over her belly to the wet curls of her puss, she moaned and stroked his cock in turn.

“Sweet love, do you like that?”

Roland whispered as his thick fingers stroked through her curls. Sabina gasped and turned her head blindly, finding the crook of his neck as he palmed her intimately, the first man to ever do so.

Firmly, sweetly, Roland stroked his hand over her again and again, his other hand curling around her hip to run up her side. She grasped that hand and firmly brought it to her breast.

Sabina grunted into his neck as he squeezed her tit gently, testing the weight of her through the binding. The hand he had down her breeches worked her, parking the lips of her puss to run over the most secret parts of her.

She was forgetting to stroke him but he had started to bump into her hand, unaware of it as he focused on her. Then his clever fingers found her clitoris and she bit his neck trying not to scream.

Roland groaned in lust as he pushed harder, taking shocking liberties with her person. She held his hand at her breast and humped herself into his fingers. Finally he thrust a finger inside of her and she was off to the races, shoving herself onto him.

His rhythm was all wrong and the strokes of his fingers were not what she liked the most but it didn’t matter. Sabina searched blindly for his lips and got her kiss just as she came all over his fingers, her juices soaking him.

Her legs almost gave out but he held her up. When her climax was done, and only after she was finished, did he pull his fingers from her with the utmost care. He could not help palming her sweet puss before pulling her to rest next to him.

Sabina’s head was still resting on his shoulder when he licked his fingers and scented deeply, taking in her smell. Then he covered her hand, which held his penis limply, and curled her around him again, his hand guiding hers.

She made a sumptuous sound in her throat as she slid her hand up and down his shaft. He showed her how he liked it and she, being the academic, caught on quickly.

Together, they pumped Roland to his own release. Sabina smiled and sighed when he groaned into her hair.

It was a good long time before Roland redid Sabina’s breeches and then worked on setting them to rights. Sabina could not rouse herself, so happy and sated was she.

She would not be ashamed of taking her pleasure. Under cover of night, all things were allowed.

“Are you happy at Verdon House, Sabina?”

Roland asked. Sabina blinked and looked around at the foreign roof, remembering herself.

“I am safe,”

she replied and turned back to the darkness as the buskers ended their concert.

Time to return. Sabina led them back to the street with unerring accuracy. It was an innate skill she had, something that belonged to her. She may have no control over her life but she always knew where she was.

“I have invited the Villiers girls to my country estates for a quiet retreat. It would be good for Aria and Sage to rest for a while,”

Roland informed her.

He had done it for her. Sabina knew it in her bones. He was inviting her charges to his home for her. And she was so grateful that she wanted to cry.

“You did not need to do that,”

Sabina said softly. In the dim streetlight, she could not see his face, but she could feel his regard.

“I tired of the city,”

Roland said. It was a lie. “In any case, I have work waiting for me back in Kent. My estates have been neglected too long. And I would have fresh sea air, not this miasma of London.”

Sabina accepted his explanation without further comment and stopped by the greengrocers to buy an apple.

“Here, allow me,”

Roland said and hovered a hand over the selection. He picked a beautiful apple that had been hidden behind others, a perfect red apple, and dropped a coin in the greengrocer’s hand. With a flourish, he presented the apple to Sabina, who accepted graciously. Then she saw the astonished look on the greengrocer’s face and remembered again that they were both dressed as men.

Then Sabina managed to convince Roland that she absolutely did not need a cone of biscuits but he still bought her a bag of roasted nuts before securing a hansom cab. They rode quietly back to Mayfair and Sabina did not let Roland see the tears in her eyes when she left him down the road from the duke’s house.

****

Roland stared out the window pensively as the cab brought him to Schofield Manor. He hated leaving Sabina so far from the duke’s house. Any manner of ill could have befallen her, even in Mayfair, but she had insisted. She would be safely ensconced at Schofield Manor soon enough.

Roland saw the lights of his home and stopped the cab, suddenly eager for the chill of the night. He briskly made his way through his front door, absently handing his coat and hat to the footman, and ordered a tea for his study.

Roland opened the door of his study and stopped, staring at the intruder.

“What are you doing?”

Roland demanded.