The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(48)

She curled her fingers into tight balls. She’d be damned if she accepted a single farthing from the Duke of Wilkinson. Since she’d been delivered to his Mayfair residence, he’d proven himself kind, ready with a smile. But those showings of kindness could never, would never, erase the hell she and her mother had endured.

Helena drew in a slow, calming breath. Alas, she’d slipped the door open and Diggory had stepped inside.

Not here. Not now. These were the moments of madness that saw women carted off to Bedlam. That truth increased the rapid-growing panic.

Around the chambers of her mind echoed her screams and cries until the memories merged with the uproarious laughter of Lady Drake’s guests, forming a cacophony of distorted sound. Her chest moved fast, and she concentrated on the task of drawing in slow, even breaths. Do not look at the light. Do not look at the light . . . Except, like a child too innocent to know not to play with fire, she lifted her gaze to the crystal chandeliers aglow and her stomach lurched.

Helena pressed her eyes tightly closed as the acrid burning of flesh filled her nostrils. Her own flesh melting . . . dying . . . pain. So much of it . . .

You are stronger than those memories . . . Fight those thoughts, Helena . . .

“Helena?” The Duke of Wilkinson’s booming voice cut across her tortured memories, and sucked her back from the abyss.

She blinked rapidly, dimly registering the benevolently smiling duke, his glowering duchess, and . . .

Helena tipped her head, taking in the gentleman who’d, at some point, joined their trio.

Robert. Here. Flawlessly attired in midnight breeches and jacket, the expert tie of his stark white cravat accentuated the olive hue of skin that hinted at old Roman roots. Her stomach sank. How long had he been standing here? Too many times when the nightmares took hold she became lost in them, and when she came to, time and details had all blurred together. The marquess stood, a model of cool elegance, appraising her through thick, blond lashes and she stood there—well, Helena.

His lips turned up in a slow, knowing smile that sent heat coursing through her.

At being caught gawking, she wanted the marble floor to open and absorb her. She was not a weak ninny who’d ooh and aah over a fancy lord. Isn’t that what you’ve done so many times with this man . . .

She gritted her teeth at that taunting reminder rolling through her mind.

Never more grateful for the duke’s garrulous self, Helena sank back a step. “Westfield, my dear boy,” the duke was saying. He thumped Robert hard on the back. “A pleasure, as always.”

The duchess turned her lips in the semblance of a smile. “Do say you intend to come to my ball?” Another bloody ball. At the very least it was in the duke and duchess’s home and it would be vastly easier to escape the ballroom during the infernal affair.

From over the couple’s heads, Robert locked his gaze on Helena. “I would not dream of missing it for the world,” he murmured, his blue eyes radiating a powerful heat and intensity that sent butterflies dancing within.

His words and presence here now were merely a fa?ade at her bequest. How very easy it was with Robert’s enigmatic pull to believe in a sliver of a moment that there was truth to his look.

She studied him as the duke commanded his notice.

“How is my friend, the old duke, doing, eh?” The older man chortled as though he’d delivered the cleverest of quips. “Always jested about that, you know.”

Helena hovered, an outsider to their exchange. What was the jest between those old dukes? For that matter, were peers even capable of humor?

From over the duke’s much shorter frame, Robert caught her eye. “Yes, he’s older by an entire day, isn’t he,” he said, explaining for Helena’s benefit.

And a flicker of warmth fanned inside her at his concerted effort to include her.

Unnerved by that gesture from a man she once believed incapable of anything but his own self-absorption, Helena looked away. For in two days, Robert Dennington, the Marquess of Westfield, had not only agreed to assist her in her efforts, but he’d also shown this additional thoughtfulness. That man did not fit with everything she’d witnessed and heard about members of the peerage, and she didn’t know what to do with this unsettling discovery.

“Indeed, Your Grace. I trust your old injury is not paining you?”

As the duke replied, Helena caught the inside of her cheek between her teeth. With that handful of sentences, and the ease of familiarity between these two men, she had a glimpse into a world she’d never before known existed. Members of the peerage were incapable of warmth and affection. They didn’t speak with any real sincerity, or make inquiries into past injuries. Yet, these two men—Robert and the man who’d sired her—in fact, did. And she didn’t know what to make of it. It unsettled the previously stable foundation upon which she’d built her well-ordered existence.

While the two noblemen conversed, the duchess glared at Helena in a very unduchesslike display of volatile emotion. Fortunately, the duke said something requiring his wife’s attention. At being spared that woman’s open apathy, Helena relaxed her shoulders. She’d faced thieves in the Dials who inspired less evil than the duke’s wife. Not for the first time, the duke’s one-time affection for Helena’s effervescent mother made sense.

Mayhap this was how the other half lived. With men marrying where they had to, but living a life of some happiness outside those respectable unions.