The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(51)

She took his hands, and leaning up on tiptoe kissed his cheek. “Since you’ve left for your bachelor residence, I’ve not had an opportunity to speak to you.” There was a faintly accusatory edge there that fanned his guilt.

“I’ve been otherwise . . . occupied,” he said, mindful of the woman at his back. Helena’s gaze bore into him.

His sister snorted. “Occupied.”

Yes, given the dissolute lifestyle he’d led, why should his sister believe he’d in fact committed himself to daily meetings with their father’s man-of-affairs? Regardless, he’d not have the discussion in front of Helena. He yanked one of her blonde curls. “What do you require, scamp?”

She grinned. “I wish to visit a bookshop on St Giles Cir . . .” Her words trailed off, as past his shoulder, her gaze bumped into Helena. Interest filled her expressive eyes. “Oh, hello.”

Robert quickly shifted so he no longer obstructed the crowd, or his sister’s view of the young woman.

“Hello,” Helena murmured, and dropped a hasty, if less than pretty, curtsy.

He opened his mouth to make the proper introductions, but Beatrice reached past him. “Forgive me, I did not see you there. I am Lady Beatrice Dennington.” She gestured to him. “Robert’s sister.”

Helena hesitated, and then placed her gloved fingers in his sister’s, returning that slight shake. “Helena Banbury. The . . .” Color suffused her cheeks. “Duke of Wilkinson’s daughter.”

A gasp exploded from his sister’s lips and she swung her gaze from Helena up to Robert. Understanding filled her eyes. “You are the duke’s daughter.”

Helena stiffened. “I am.”

He’d known Helena Banbury for only a handful of exchanges but had come to appreciate the way in which she brought her shoulders back, and tipped her chin up with those expressions of pride and defensiveness. What whispers she must have endured in her short time here to account for the reservation there, and how he despised every bloody bastard to put that guarded look in her eyes. She made to draw back her fingers, but his sister retained her hold.

A small, clear laugh escaped Beatrice. “Oh, I am so very glad.”

Helena furrowed her brow and looked blankly at Robert.

He gave his head a shake. It was hardly the place to explain that his sister had drawn the erroneous assumption that he’d launched an official courtship of the duke’s barely out of the schoolroom daughter. Even with Helena’s elevated status as a duke’s daughter, Beatrice would never disdain a person because of their station.

“May I pay you a visit, Miss Banbury?”

Helena tilted her head at an endearing angle. “Visit?” she parroted back.

His sister’s smile dipped. “Unless, you’d rather I did not?”

Wary caution blared in her eyes. “N-no,” she stammered. How much unkindness had she known that she’d built up these guarded walls about herself? “I would . . .” A hesitant smile quivered on her lips. “Like that very much.” And more, why should it matter to him? He was aiding her for the remainder of the Season out of a sense of honor to make right a wrong he’d done. Robert fisted his hands. So why this need to know the stories and secrets that had turned her into this guarded creature?

Beatrice clapped her hands. “Splendid. I shall call tomorrow afternoon.”

That snapped him back from his tumultuous musings. “No,” he exclaimed, earning the attention of both young women. “Miss Banbury was explaining that she has lessons with a very skilled dance master on the morrow.”

A charged look passed between Helena and Robert, and by the rapid rise and fall of her chest, she too was now thinking of all talk of his hands on her and the lesson she expected.

“Oh, drat,” his sister said and patted Helena on the hand regretfully. “They are rather tedious, are they not? Another time, then?”

Helena nodded. “That would be lovely, my lady.” She glanced across the ballroom, and then smoothed her palms down the front of her skirts. “I see the duchess motioning to me. If you’ll excuse me?” She stole another glance at Robert.

He swiftly captured her fingers and raised them to his mouth, damning the fabric between them that denied him the feel of her skin against his. “Miss Banbury,” he said quietly, in even, modulated tones.

“L-Lord Westfield.”

And as Helena turned on her heel and marched away, and his sister prattled on, he conceded that, for the first time in the course of his life, he was rather looking forward to a dance lesson.





Chapter 13


Rule 13


No friends.

Perched in her familiar spot in the window seat, Helena and Diana sat in a companionable silence.

While Helena read, the duke’s daughter, proper in all ways, bent her head over her embroidery, attending that task the way a military general attended his battle plans.

The young woman’s faint humming filled the otherwise quiet of the room. Using her sister’s distraction, Helena contemplated Lord and Lady Drake’s ball. More specifically, she thought to the tender exchange she’d witnessed between Robert and his sister. Lady Beatrice was just one young woman, amongst a sea of so many . . . and yet, early on Helena had come to appreciate all a person could learn from the number one. Beatrice was a single person, a loving sister to Robert, who believed the sun set and rose for him. And that spoke volumes more than the years’ worth of preconceived notions Helena had carried about members of the peerage.