The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(54)

Again, that sense of . . . belonging filled her. Sentiments she’d only known amongst her brothers. Feelings she’d thought she’d never know outside of the comfort and safety of her world.

What is happening to me?



Robert had bedded countless numbers of skilled widows and clever courtesans. Sometimes together. But never had he lain awake, hungering for something as innocent as a dance with the spirited Helena Banbury. That anticipation had only grown in his short ride over this afternoon.

And by the lady’s flushed cheeks and parted lips, she was not wholly immune to him.

“Shall we?” He held out a hand, and she darted her tongue out and ran it over the seam of her lips.

“I-I do not think with the furniture there is space enough for a lesson.” He smiled at the regret in those words.

“Indeed, there is not,” he concurred, and her expression fell. He offered her his elbow.

She eyed his elbow a moment, and then looked to him. “What are you doing?”

Robert brushed his knuckles along her sharp jawline. “Evading your maid, who is no doubt already being fetched.”

The lady pressed her mouth into a flat line. “And I take it you are proficient in avoiding being discovered with women?” A slight edge underscored that supposition, telling all the same.

The actuality of it was, he, in fact, was skilled in carrying out clandestine meetings and wicked assignations behind his host’s parlor doors. After the night he’d bore witness to Lucy’s treachery, he’d found a safe pleasure in all those meaningless entanglements. “I wish to dance with you,” he said quietly, and with no small amount of shock he realized his words did not come from the easy store of pretty comments and praise he had on the ready.

Helena peered at him. Did she seek the veracity of his profession? He went still under her scrutiny, and then the lady rolled her eyes. “You needn’t play the rogue for my benefit. Where are we to dance?”

It was perfectly reasonable for her to see falsity in his claims, and yet disappointment tightened his belly. Disappointment that, for the first time in twelve years he’d spoken without the intent of seduction, and Helena had seen nothing more. Plastering on a perfectly practiced grin, Robert slid her fingers into his sleeve. “Having hidden in these halls as a child, I’ve the benefit of knowing my way around with some familiarity.”

Her lips twitched. “I expect you were troublesome.”

“Oh, most,” he easily concurred, ringing a laugh from her, and he missed a step. Her face wreathed in a smile, and cheeks flushed from her contagious joy, she was a siren.

Helena lifted her sparkling gaze, and some of the light dimmed. “What is it?”

Unnerved, Robert forced a grin. “I was simply thinking of all my outrageous antics.” He neatly steered her down the hall, leading her on a twisting and turning path through the mammoth residence. Yes, the lady’s poor maid would need a map to locate her mistress. Robert grinned.

“Tell me.”

How direct she was. Where ladies prevaricated and spoke with deliberate words, she commanded.

“Well, there was the summer party, I gathered sheets from all the guest chambers, knotted them together, and made a makeshift rope.” As a boy of eight, he’d believed his parents would, if not be pleased, at least appreciate that he’d not touched the linens on any of the beds occupied by their family.

“For what purpose?”

He grinned at her. “Why, I, at the ripe age of eight, I fashioned myself an explorer.” She giggled and again he tripped over his thoughts. Those carefree, innocent expressions of mirth, so common and practiced in other women, were as rare as a fire rainbow with this woman. Lest he kill that fleeting joy, Robert rushed the remainder of the story out. “I tied the sheets together and knotted one end around the balustrade that overlooked the foyer with the express intention of climbing down.” Robert spread his hands wide.

She widened her eyes. “Surely it was not as high as—”

“The duke’s foyer?” he neatly interrupted. “Higher.” His lips quirked. “I made it nearly three quarters of the way down.” Before his weight had pulled free the less than impressive knot he’d worked around the balustrade. “I suffered nothing more than a sprained arm, and a month’s long loss of dessert following evening meals.”

Helena slapped a hand over her mouth, stymieing the amusement on her full lips. Her shoulders shook with the force of her laughter, and her mirth contagious, Robert joined in. He didn’t speak about his past, any part of it, with anyone. What was it about her that had called forth this particular memory?

Unease rolled through him. This off-kilter effect Helena Banbury had on him was a sentiment he’d believed himself immune to after Lucy’s betrayal, and yet how easily she threw his thoughts and emotion into tumult? Eager to divert the discourse to safer grounds, Robert steered her to the back of the duke’s townhouse and brought them to a stop beside the doorway that emptied out into the duchess’s prized gardens. An image flitted in his mind of who she would have been as a child of eight, a gangly girl, in all manner of mischief. “What of you, Helena, what were you like as child?” he asked as he pushed the door open. He took several steps before he realized Helena remained in the doorway.

Gone were all hints of mirth. In its place was a dark somberness that sent a chill skittering along his spine. She forced a smile that stretched her cheeks. “I thought we were not to speak of the past.” There was an underlying thread of desperation that hung on that reminder, and a vise squeezed about his lungs.