Page 7 of Undoubtedly Reckless (Rebel by Night #2)

Raining Champagne

Sabina stared at the lordling in front of her, stunned. Her former rescue and man-of-all-work looked every inch the aristocrat. She had been among this class long enough to know that Roland was not pretending. He was an actual member of the gentry. She shook her head.

Then she realized that he was holding her very familiarly, lover-like. And he was stronger than before.

“Roland? What? What are you doing here?”

Sabina shook herself free of her stasis and moved out of his grasp. He tightened his arm around her and they engaged in a brief battle of tugs, which she won by spinning out of his grasp. She then snatched his hand and all but dragged him into a dark stairwell by the garden door.

“I’m hiding from my duties. What are you doing here?”

Roland set the empty champagne flutes aside and took her hands, quite improperly. She could feel him, even through both of their gloves. Sabina allowed it because he was here, he was real, and he was touching her again.

“I am also hiding from my duties,”

Sabina admitted, taking stock of the man. This must be what he actually was, what he hid from her in Hornsea.

“Duties? Surely you’re not a maid,”

Roland took equal stock of her plain dress and she was grateful for the shadows, for he could not see her blush.

“I work here,”

Sabina explained.

“Work? You were working at the academy in Whitchurch. Until you left. I could not find you.”

“I did not realize you searched for me,”

Sabina paused. “I heard nothing from you for months before I left Pelham for a finishing school in Salisbury. Salisbury is much larger and it is easier to hide in a crowd. However, there was a change in management a few months ago and I left, at the invitation of one of my students. Now I am employed by the Villiers family. I’m governess to the duke’s sisters,”

Sabina said. Suddenly, she was aware that she was still in her day dress.

“What is that on your face?”

he asked blankly.

“My spectacles.”

“Is something the matter with your vision?”

“No, I don’t want people to look at me. Men don’t look at women in spectacles,”

Sabina stopped herself from babbling. “Roland, you’re a guest here. I apologize for getting in your way, I believe you were attempting to escape?”

“After two years, you want to be rid of me so quickly?”

Roland flashed a smile and suddenly Sabina was transported to Hornsea. It had been so long since she had smelled the sea and felt the wind in her hair. It had been just as long since a man looked at her with such genuine warmth. “May I ask, what are you attempting to escape? Your own responsibilities?”

“The girls are safely abed, so they promised me, and I wanted to see the soiree.”

“It’s a ball. I don’t understand why he tries to call it anything else. But never the matter, I must tell you something,”

Roland took her hand. She looked at him in askance.

“George Templeton is dead,”

Roland said. Sabina started to sag and Roland quickly wrapped an arm around her waist again. She did not push him away this time.

“Did you?”

Sabina started and could not finish.

“I didn’t kill him,”

Roland said. “Well, not directly,”

he amended.

“Roland, please,”

Sabina pleaded.

“I had Templeton put on a prison ship to Botany Bay. He arrived and was killed there, likely because he talked back to one of the overseers. The point, Sabina, is that you are safe. You can stop hiding,”

Roland said.

Sabina struggled to breathe. Safety. She was safe.

No, she had some time yet before she was safe. Roland was here now. She could pretend for a while.

“I cannot leave this employment,”

Sabina said.

“You don’t need to live like this,”

Roland said.

“No, in fact, I do. This is necessary, and I have much to thank you for. You gave me this life and I need to stay as I am for a while longer.”

“How long?”

“Until I am five and twenty years old,”

Sabina said. “In February.”

He held her hand still, most inappropriately, and she allowed it. He had saved her life once.

“There’s a story here,”

Roland said. “This is why you were hiding in Hornsea.”

“Yes,”

Sabina said. She met his gaze intently. “Please don’t ask me more.”

****

Roland wanted to press her but this was not a woman to be rushed.

“All right,”

Roland said, searching her pale hazel eyes. He knew the impropriety of their position but he felt at peace being with her again. A part of him had always been concerned for her, even as he had traveled, fought, stole, and been imprisoned. Of all the people in the world, this was someone he would choose to hide with, more than anyone in the ballroom.

“Thank you, my lord,”

Sabina said, drawing back. He frowned. In front of his eyes, Sabina was disappearing into a role, acting in a play. She bobbed in a brief curtsey. “I will leave you to your escape.”

“So obvious, am I?”

Roland said, his mind working furiously. “Please, I don’t mean to dissuade you from what you are doing. What are you doing?”

“Spying on the soiree, of course. Governesses don’t attend such gatherings,”

Sabina explained seriously.

“Did you come to view the gowns? Which one is your favorite?”

Roland changed the subject, looking down at the masses.

“The éclair, or maybe the glazed petit-four,”

Sabina answered absently. “Oh, drat, she took the last one.”

Roland blinked. Oh, yes, this he could take action on.

“Wait here,”

he ordered. “I won’t be a moment.”

Then he swept discreetly into the ballroom.

It took but a thrice to return, carrying plunder. With a flourish, he presented her with a plate overflowing with a variety of pastries. In one hand, he carried two fresh flutes of champagne.

“Oh,”

Sabina breathed. “Oh, I love you so.”

“It’s a bit soon for that,”

Roland said, discombobulated, and then realized she was speaking to the plate. Sabina took the plate and led him through a maze of stairs until they were in the upper gallery of the ballroom, which was closed for the soiree. They settled on the floor a bit away from the railing and poured the champagne, commencing their picnic.

“Now, will you tell me your story or must I guess?”

Sabina asked, sipping her champagne carefully.

Roland sipped thoughtfully as he watched her closely examine each pastry and then make a selection with the gravity of a judge passing a hanging sentence. Sabina bit into the cream puff with gusto and not a trace of daintiness. Her eyes fluttered close behind the spectacles as a dreamy expression stole across her face and took his breath away.

“You first. How awful was your life in Whitchurch that you had to leave?”

Roland asked.

“It was small. I feared I would be found. Salisbury was a better place to hide. I did not think you would look for me.”

“Of course I looked for you. I wanted to see that you were settled properly.”

“When did you come? I left Pelham’s after nine months.”

“A year,”

Roland admitted. “I came after a year.”

“You could have written,”

Sabina said, and made a face. “My apologies. You were under no obligation to write.”

“I couldn’t have, in any event. Later, that is. It wasn’t safe, and for some parts, I was jailed.”

Roland sipped his wine.

“And now you’re a guest at a ducal soiree. How your fortunes have changed.”

“For the better, certainly. You’re also here. Was the Salisbury school not to your liking?”

“I enjoyed it greatly, for all that I was living someone else’s life. Before, I was a schoolteacher in Yorkshire. After, I was a schoolteacher in Shropshire, which is much more interesting than I expected. I even grew used to being Sabina Kembrooke,”

Sabina said, with only a little sadness.

“I am glad you kept your name, Sabina,”

Roland said seriously. That increased her sorrow. He did not know her name.

“Is champagne supposed to taste like this?”

She frowned.

“It’s a touch burnt. No wonder it’s being served so late.”

“Are you going to tell me now who you are?”

Sabina asked before popping the rest of the pastry into her mouth.

“I cannot fathom how that is necessary. You are Sabina. I am Roland.”

“You are dressed as a nobleman and you are a guest at a ducal soiree. You are not merely Roland.”

He hesitated and Sabina scoffed.

“I won’t tell anyone how we are acquainted, my lord. The moment I reveal that I took a pirate into my home for a month is the moment I lose my position. I need this job.”

Sabina leaned back on her arms, waiting. Roland bowed his head in defeat.

“My name is Roland Darewood,”

he revealed. She raised an eyebrow and waited as she sipped champagne. “Viscount Schofield, Baron Darewood,”

he finished, with a touch of embarrassment.

“I knew it.”

She grinned. “I knew you were a bloody aristocrat.”

“Language, Mrs. Kembrooke,”

Roland admonished. “What kind of a governess are you?”

“An educator,”

Sabina declared, lifting a cube of mille-feuille to her lips. “Women should know everything, including curses. Ignorance breeds misunderstanding and entraps you. I want to know what imprecations a person is yelling at me.”

“A useful skill if you frequent the docks,”

Roland said. “Sabina, slow down. You don’t drink frequently, do you?”

“The twins are abed and this is the first time I’ve had champagne. Also, I just discovered my former man-of-all-work is a bloody aristocrat. Can you credit it? A viscount fixed my leaking roof.”

“I am pleased that my station in life is of such entertainment for you,”

Roland said dryly.

“So, you’re Aria’s long-lost brother. Does she know what you did while you were presumed dead?”

“You know my sister?”

“I taught Lady Ariadne Darewood in Salisbury. She was at the finishing school with the duke’s sisters.”

“Why have you not come to call? I have not seen you nor your charges.”

“The girls are not out yet. We’ve only recently arrived from the countryside. The duke is not fond of London. In any event, Aria was two years older than the duke’s sisters.”

“What are the chances, you teaching at the school my sister attended?”

Roland muttered. “She knows I was a privateer. Sage Amleigh is staying with us, you must have taught her too.”

“Sage is under your care? Lucky girl. Why didn’t you adopt me too?”

Sabina drained her glass. Her useless spectacles were askew and she removed them.

There was the woman he knew. He had missed that face. Sabina was here. Sabina was safe. He no longer had to worry for her.

And yet he stayed. Sitting with her on the floor, eating pilfered pastries, this was the closest he had felt to contentment since Cress had rescued him from prison. Sabina should not be toiling in obscurity. Roland had status and money again, surely he could find her a better alternative.

“Look at that woman, dressed as a peacock,”

Sabina said idly, her champagne flute dangling from a limp hand. “She looks angry.”

Roland glanced at who she indicated and remembered fragments of the conversation his sister had presided over.

“She is angry because her daughter, the newly widowed Countess of Altwood, has taken up with her mother’s former lover, a baronet,”

Roland explained.

“That’s appalling.”

“That’s the Ton.”

“And you call my class vulgar?”

“You are a lady, a true lady, and always have been. No other woman here would have rescued me from certain death,”

Roland assured her gravely. He had thought so years ago in Hornsea and still knew it to be true.

“No other woman here would have been caught dead in Yorkshire during a storm,”

Sabina slurred.

“Sabina, perhaps it is time to return to your rooms,”

Roland started.

“Room. Singular. I’m a governess, Roland, not a member of the family.”

Sabina looked at him quizzically and tried to stand. She swayed and he snatched for her arm. He ended up with a handful of waist instead.

She was drunk, he realized. What if she had been caught by another person, someone who did not have a care for her?

How many times must he point out that she is not his responsibility?

“My father used to save a dance for me,”

Sabina said dreamily. “I wasn’t old enough to attend or drink champagne but my father always saved a dance for me at every house party. I would wait for him out on the second-floor balcony with a plate of pastries, and he would put me on his feet and dance me around. He promised he would give me my first glass of champagne at my come-out ball.”

Roland was quiet. This was more than she had ever told him before. So she would have been a debutante, same as his sister, had tragedy not befallen her. And it was most certainly a tragedy because there was no other reason for her to keep running from her past.

He looked at her dreamy eyes and remembered a night, long ago, in a moon-drenched mere. Tugging his coat into place with one hand, he bowed a bit and took her other hand, quite properly.

“Sabina fair, may I have this dance?”

Roland asked softly. Sabina’s eyes widened in delight and she followed his lead, as deliberately graceful as any fine lady in the ballroom.

He led her in a minuet, as respectful and courtly as any gentleman.

“This is a lovely dream,”

Sabina said.

“To dance?”

“To be safe,”

Sabina said, and he almost tripped. She seemed not to notice. “This is quite different from our previous country dance.”

“Remember that, do you?”

“I remember everything,”

Sabina said sadly. “I remember I gave my first kiss to a man I barely knew.”

“I will be forever grateful for the privilege.”

Suddenly, she pulled away from him.

“I must return to my room,”

she breathed hard.

“Can you go on your own?”

“I must,”

she said. “If I am found with you, I will lose this employment.”

“You don’t have to work here. I can help you.”

“Roland, we must pretend we have never met before. Please, this employment is important to me.”

“You must promise you will come to me if you need aid,”

Roland said.

“That would be highly inappropriate. I will be fine,”

she said and turned to leave. She looked back over her shoulder. “I missed you. All these years. I’ve always missed you.”

And then she was gone. Again.

Roland stared in the space she vacated and stayed in the shadows some moments longer. This would not be the last time they would speak, he swore it.