The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(52)

Not everyone was as she seemed. Wasn’t Helena herself—and her brothers—proof of that?

She returned her study to Diana. And here was another young woman who threw into question everything Helena had long ago accepted as empirical fact.

When she had entered this household, she’d been determined to hate anything and everything here, for they were extensions of the man who’d abandoned Helena and her mother, whose defection had seen them in the clutches of a man who would make Satan cower in dread.

With the emerald pendant she always wore and her expensive white satin gowns, Diana represented all Helena had hated through the years. As a child begging and thieving in the streets, she’d seen the Lady Dianas of the world, flawless and perfect, and oblivious . . . with nothing but a look of disdain for the Helena Banburys and developed an easy loathing for all of them.

Or she thought she had.

Every day spent in this rapidly confusing Society, everything she’d believed to be fact proved just as murky and muddled as those early days when her mother had taken up with Mac Diggory.

Helena looked to where the young girl sat, drawing her needle through the fabric stretched out in the embroidery frame. Yes, she wanted to hate her.

Except Diana, with her innocent smile and even more innocent acceptance of Helena, had made it impossible to hate her. There was a greater likelihood of hating spun sugar and rainbows than this girl.

She was the sunny, joyful woman who gentlemen wed. Men like Robert. Men who had titles and wealth and who kept mistresses on the side, and visited scandalous gaming hells.

The duchess’s seething pronouncement from days earlier slipped into her thoughts. These two powerful ducal families who’d been so closely connected, and the expectation of at least the duchess that her daughter would one day wed Robert.

At the time, she’d not truly given the thought consideration. That when she left, Robert would find his proper, perfect bride, and why should that bride not be Diana? They would be the model of a flawless, golden English couple matched in their lineal connections and wealth. Unlike Helena, who would always be, no matter the Duke of Wilkinson’s futile efforts, the daughter of a whore who’d spent more years on the streets than in the comfort the duke had afforded his mistress.

The book trembled in Helena’s hands, bringing her attention to the jagged, scarred flesh.

She stared blankly down at those marks.

Badges of honor, Ryker had called them.

Helena smiled sadly. What rot. What utter and absolute rubbish. They were hideous. They were the hands of a common street urchin and not the manner of smooth, soft hands that managed ladylike skills such as embroidering.

A maid appeared at the entrance of the room. She dropped a curtsy. “My lady, your mother has asked you join her in the foyer.”

Diana paused midhum, and looked up from her work. “Oh, splendid. I’ll be but a moment,” she said, and the young maid rushed off. And the peculiarity of it all was that given those happy tones, the girl rather meant that. She caught Helena staring, and smiled. “Mother and I are to visit the modiste,” she said happily. Happy. She was always happy. Even at the prospect of an outing alone with her shrewish, always scolding mother. “I am to be fitted for a new bonnet,” Diana said, with an ever-widening smile. It was the duke’s smile, just another gift he’d passed down to one of his offspring. “You will come, yes?”

Retaining the book in her hands, Helena swung her legs over the side of her seat, and her skirts settled noisily at her ankles. “No.” She gentled that rejection, by lifting up her book. “I am,” waiting for a scandalous dance lesson. Or she had been. “I am going to remain behind and read.”

Diana made to rise, but Helena placed a staying hand on her knee. “Before you go, I would speak to you on . . . something,” she began slowly. A tight ball of dread curled in her belly.

Diana stared patiently back. “Yes?”

Searching her mind, Helena slid into the chair closest to the duke’s true daughter. She set Argand’s work on complex numbers down on the rose-inlaid side table. How she wished for the skilled ability to converse with anyone, about anything. Including this matter. She’d not known this particular issue could be a problem until the duchess’s furious words, yesterday afternoon. “The Marquess of Westfield,” she began.

And then she had nothing. Secretly she prayed the other young woman was capable enough with discourse to handle this entire discussion for the both of them. For what if Diana expressed that her heart was in some way engaged? A deep, dark, ugly sentiment that felt very much like jealousy slithered and twisted around inside.

Diana continued to blink like a confused pup. “What of him?”

“Your families are . . . quite close,” she settled for, recalling the easy familiarity between the Duke of Wilkinson and Robert in the midst of the Lord and Lady Drake’s ball.

“Our families.”

Helena looked blankly at her.

“Well, it is just, you said ‘your’ families, and this is your family too, Helena. So ‘our’ families.”

At that beautiful gesture, tears misted her vision. She blinked them back. Why could all these people not be the same nasty beasts as the Duchess of Wilkinson?

“You were asking?” Diana steered her back to the reason of her questioning.

“Uh, yes.” She drew in a steadying breath, and then spoke on a rush. “Are there feelings on your part?”