The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(39)

“I’m not a whore,” she snapped.

“I did not say you were,” he said in lazy tones, even as his neck went hot. He’d merely thought she was.

“You didn’t need to,” she shot back.

Fair enough.

Wise to not continue this odd discourse along that decidedly unfavorable, never-to-end-well path, he turned a question on her. “What do you want?” For inevitably, all women wanted something. And Lucy Whitman had taught him a healthy dose of circumspection for women of her station. Inevitably that something was invariably marriage and money. Though the two went hand in hand.

The young woman jutted her chin up. “For you to do right by me.”

Ah, so there it was. As it always was. A hard, humorless grin pulled at his lips. “Ah, you expect marriage, then?”

“Marriage to you?” She snorted. “I’d sooner dig Boney’s dead body from the grave and drag him down the aisle than tie myself to one such as you.”

One such as him? He should be equal parts offended and horrified. Except . . .

It was hardly every day that he, the future Duke of Somerset, received that manner of response to the prospect of marriage to him.

The lady narrowed lethal eyes on him. “Are you smiling?”

Distantly, he recalled the impressive fury of her feet as she’d buried them in his side. “Not at all,” he said, smoothing his features.

She leaned forward and peered at his mouth. If he hadn’t effectively disarmed her, and claimed possession of her knife, he’d be worried about another attack.

Robert raked his gaze over her person. “Is this about your blade?” he asked, when she still said nothing. “If so, you needn’t have gone to the trouble to don that dress.” A rather hideous gown, too. “And steal into the earl’s home.”

Mimicking his movements, the young woman folded her arms at her flat chest. “Is that why you believe I’m here? To retrieve my knife?” A knife which he really should have found a way to return. “A weapon you really should have returned,” she said in an eerie echo of his very thoughts.

“I will see it done,” he said, in the tone he used to settle his fractious mount.

The woman studied him, tapping her slipper in a distracted staccato on the hardwood floor. Then she narrowed her eyes all the more. “Why, you’ve no idea what I am doing here?” She uttered that accusation as though he should know. The vixen made a sound of disgust. “Then, why should you?” She scraped another disgusted glance up and down his person. “You hardly would know what transpired when you left.”

His stomach tightened. What transpired when I left? In a display of total self-absorption he’d not given another thought of the woman at the Hell and Sin beyond the fleeting moments that trickled in of her memory. “What happened?” he asked quietly. “Have you become a gentleman’s mistress?” If so, surely that was a station a good deal safer and preferable than that of whore in a notorious gaming hell?

She snorted. “And I’d sooner wed you than become a gentleman’s plaything.”

Which given her earlier desire to drag Boney’s bones up and march him down the aisle was indeed saying much about her views on being a man’s mistress.

“I am here because of you,” she said, at last shedding some still-vague light on her presence here. “After you left the Hell and Sin, it was . . .” She grimaced. “Discovered that I’d been concealing your presence in the club.”

He stilled. “You were sent away for it,” he said quietly.

She gave a terse nod.

Once again guilt assailed him at his own total self-absorption. He’d not given another real thought to the woman beyond curiosity at her spirited reaction.

“I was sent to live with my . . .” Splotches of color suffused her cheek. “F-father.” She stumbled over that last part, and then glowered at him, daring with her eyes for him to say a word about that particular detail.

He took in the fine quality of her garments and her reluctant admission. She was a by-blow. That was how she’d come to be here.

Fire lit the green of her eyes. “I expect you to do right by me.”

All previous guilt immediately died. A wry smile formed on his lips. Inevitably they all came round to the matter of marriage. It would seem even this feisty woman.

The lady pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “I’ve already said I’d—”

“Sooner wed Boney’s dead bones,” he interrupted dryly with a wave of his hand. “Yes, I remember all that.” Frustration again gripped him. “Why do you not say what it is you’ve come to say, Miss . . . ?”

“Black. Helena Banbury,” she supplied, and by the ice in her gaze, this was not the first time he’d been in possession of that particular detail.

“Given your appearance here,” in the midst of his assignation, “you’ve gone to a good deal of trouble to discover my whereabouts and follow me here.”

She sighed. “How arrogant you noblemen are,” she spoke, more to herself.

He chafed at being lumped into the rather unimpressive category where she’d filed away all other men. Then, given his deplorable indifference toward her thus far, he’d no doubt, in her estimation, rightly earned that less-than-distinguished place.