The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(32)

“Do you know what I want?” She sat forward in her seat. “I want freedom on the floors, just like every other club proprietor. I wish to have full freedom to go outside as I wish, when I wish,” without goddamn permission from every brother here. “And now, now I want to return to my books.”

“You are not keeping books.”

It did not escape her how neatly he’d sidestepped her other statements preceding that particular one. “No, no I am not,” she said with a nod. “I’m sitting here speaking to you about my actions as though I’m a child and not a woman of nearly five and twenty years.” She climbed to her feet.

“Sit down, Helena.” That low, dangerous whisper brought her back to a slow sit. As long as she’d known her brother, he’d taken care to avoid the use of names. When she’d been a girl, she’d tried to understand why. Now, she wagered it was his successful bid to keep people at bay.

“You wish to know what life is like outside these clubs.”

She flattened her mouth. Where was the crime in wanting to see more than the walls of this club?

“You’ve to determine which life you wish to live.” Not taking his icy gaze from Helena, he motioned to the still-quiet lord at her side. “This is the Duke of Wilkinson.” She swung her gaze around and took in the details to previously escape her. The colorful attire. Those chocolate-brown eyes. Five or six stones heavier, he was still the same man—her father. Oh, God. A faint humming filled her ears and she was grateful for the sturdy chair under her.

“The duke has agreed to take you in. You’ll be safe there.”

She’d be safe there? Away from her family? “Take me in?” she parroted, her words coming as if down a distant hall. All the while panic crested in a wave that threatened to drag her under.

“For the Season,” the duke piped in, resting his hands on his large paunch. “You’ll quite enjoy it. There’s the theatre and balls and the park . . .” As he continued prattling on, Helena whipped her gaze back to Ryker.

“You are mad,” she rasped. “Corked in the brain.”

He narrowed his eyes. Anyone else would have surely felt the wrath of his fist for such a charge, and in this moment she wished she’d been born a male of equal strength so she could bloody his face for this betrayal.

“I do not wish to go. I wish to remain here.”

“You’ve been asking to go out,” he shot back quietly.

She blinked rapidly. How did he know that? Because this was the life she wanted. The only one she knew. “How do you know you wish to be here and not in London?” she returned, when she at last found words.

The ghost of a smile hovered on his scarred lips in a fleeting expression of . . . pride? Amusement? From a man who took care to show nothing to the world. “Four months. The remainder of the Season,” he said, and gone was all hint of mirth.

Her breath came in loud, noisy spurts. “The books,” she rasped. She clearly did not matter to him. Given the ease with which he’d send her away, she never had. But he at least loved the club. Surely he could not send her away so easily, not with all the ways in which he relied on her efforts?

“Adair will see to them.”

Helena fell back in her chair. For just like that, with five words, he’d dismissed her worth at this club. “I h-have put this club first before a-anyone and anything,” she whispered, hating the quaver to her voice.

Gaze trained on Helena, Ryker ordered the duke to wait outside.

She stared incredulously as the corpulent lord ambled to his feet. “Of course, of course,” he said obligingly, and took his leave.

As soon as the door closed with a faint click, Helena launched into Ryker. “I have been nothing but loyal and for all my work, you’d repay me with this?”

Ryker sent a single eyebrow arcing up. “Ah, but that isn’t altogether true, is it?” The dangerous steel underscoring could cut as surely as the dagger that bastard had nicked from her. “You put Lord Westfield first.”

She shook her head uncomprehendingly. Who in blazes . . . ?

“Lord Robert Westfield.”

Robert.

The bloody bastard.

Her brother peeled his lip back in a faint sneer. “You’d place a gentleman whose identity you did not even know before the people in this hell.”

“He entered my chambers,” she gritted out between tightly clenched teeth.

“And spent the night,” Ryker said, glancing at the clock beyond her shoulder.

He is going to end this discussion, which isn’t really a discussion. He is going to run me off so he can return to his very important business. Her fury rose, with her brother, with the family who’d betrayed her, with the bastard who’d stumbled inside her rooms, and with herself for having blundered the whole bloody situation.

“You’d send me away because of him, then?” she snapped. Ryker, who hated the whole of the peerage more than anyone or anything, would force her to go live with the duke who’d abandoned them.

“Yes,” he said with a bluntness that drained the blood from her cheeks. “You wish to know what life is like outside these walls, then you shall. You have four months. If in four months you wish your post back, then it is yours.” With finality ringing in that pronouncement, Helena’s breathing increased.