The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(40)

“I overheard you speaking to your lover,” she said, still tapping her foot in a grating rhythm.

“Overheard me?” He’d been at the back of the ballroom, away from prying eyes, and the baroness’s invitation had been a barely there whisper. If he were of a mind, he’d correct her on the matter of his being any lover, past or present, to the baroness. Thanks to this one’s poorly timed interruption.

“You nobles do not know the meaning of the word quiet,” she explained. He let his arms fall to his sides. By her tone she intended to deliver a lecture on subterfuge. Hardly surprising given a lady who called the Hell and Sin home and carried a knife on her person.

Robert hitched his hip on the back of a nearby leather button sofa. “Given your sentiments on marriage to me, I suggest you get on with what’s brought you here, before we’re discovered, and you’re ruined.” Again. That word hung silent, unspoken between them.

Guilt dug at him.

Helena nodded. “I am to spend the entire Season here.” She wrinkled her nose. “If I do not make a match, in three months’ time, then I am free to return to the club.”

“And you prefer that?”

She must have heard something in his question that she didn’t like for she shot her gaze to his. Robert braced for another stern dressing down from the tart-mouthed woman. “I do,” she said tersely, and proceeded to pace. “I’ve three months and I’ve no desire to make a match.”

Given her nasty temperament and unconventionality that should not prove difficult. Members of the peerage often proved themselves remarkable dolts, incapable of seeing past the surface of a person. “It’s but three months,” he pointed out, swinging his leg back and forth.

The lady stopped abruptly and glowered.

He abruptly ceased that distracted movement. Once again, he’d clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding for the lady’s plight. “Have you . . .” He searched his mind. “Been heavily courted?” Robert concealed all hint of surprise from that inquiry.

Another inelegant snort escaped Helena. She motioned to herself. “Do I strike you as one who has had to deal with too many suitors?”

The lady no doubt referred to her marked face and hands. He’d not bother to point out that it was her shrewish temperament more than anything that surely deterred gentlemen. And her status as by-blow. Most lords would not look past that lowly birthright.

“Or I didn’t have to worry after suitors,” she mumbled, and resumed her pacing. “My father settled a dowry on me.” Helena paused, and looked up at him.

By her pointed stare, she expected something from him. He lifted an eyebrow.

“Ten thousand pounds,” she said bluntly.

Robert widened his eyes. Well, yes, that would certainly land the lady all number of suitors. Most of them with pockets to the let and in need of a fat dowry. All manner of gentlemen a lady would take care to avoid. He tightened his mouth. Men whose company he had the ignoble fortune of now keeping.

She stopped her distracted movements, and came over to Robert. “I want you to court me,” she said so unexpectedly he cocked his head.

He didn’t believe he’d misheard her. Though three and thirty he was not an aged lord, hard of hearing. “Beg pardon?”

“Court me,” she repeated. “You’re a future duke, no?” With the way she peeled her lip back in a sneer, that question was spoken as an indictment more than anything.

Her disdain for his title was at odds with everything he’d come to know of all women. Feeling like a player thrust on a stage without the benefit of his lines, Robert nodded.

“I expect you’re accustomed to having what you want, when you want it?” she continued. “Ladies no doubt fawn over you.” This woman represented the exception. “Gentlemen would never do anything to offend you.”

And when having his life painted with such accurate strokes and so very . . . coldly, there was something rather humbling. “And you wish me to court you? To what end?” he asked, his tone deliberately, coolly unaffected. He’d not allow her the pleasure of knowing her words had needled.

She sighed, and then in tones better reserved for a slow-to-grasp student in the nursery, she said, “No one would dare step on the toes of a future duke. I’ll just have to suffer through your occasional visits and company, and then I’ll be free to return.”

“This is your plan?” he asked, incredulity creeping into his tone, earning another frown. “You expect me to court you . . .”

“For three months,” she interrupted. “Yes. At which point, I will return to the Hell and Sin and you . . .” She waved her hand up and down his person. “Will be free to do whatever it is you do.”

With her stinging words and sharp commands, he was close to sending her to the Devil and marching onward.

Yet, something froze him.

Mayhap it was the realization that in this, in her being thrust into polite Society, he was, in fact, in the wrong.

Mayhap, it was a sense of guilt for not having given proper thought to what might happen to the woman after he’d left the Hell and Sin.

Or mayhap it was the recent reminder of his own, until recently, obliviousness of his family’s circumstances.

“Well?”

“I am thinking,” he said absently.