The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(56)

Chapter 14


Rule 14


Never bind yourself to a man.

For ten years of her life, Helena would awake, visit her office, open her books, and work through the accountings of her brother’s club.

In the whole of those ten years, with the exception of that morning of madness with Robert’s invasion of her chambers, she’d never deviated from her safe, predictable routine.

How vastly different one’s life could become in a handful of quick moments. Her mother going from beloved mistress of a duke to lover of a violent gang leader in London had been proof of that.

And sitting here, on the stone bench in the Duchess of Wilkinson’s walled-in gardens, with her head tipped up toward the sun, after years of her safe morning routine, was now proof.

It was not that she didn’t miss her work. She did. It was just . . . this new sense of discovering life beyond the Hell and Sin Club. In the immediacy of Ryker’s sending her away, she’d not seen past her own sense of hurt betrayal. How dare he simply turn her out? Not only because in doing so he’d devalued her role with the Hell, but also because it had proven his inconstancy in a sea of already faithless men.

Helena angled her head back and the sun’s rays bathed her face in a warm, soothing heat.

Mayhap this is why Ryker sent her here. Mayhap, he’d known that she needed to confront the life she could belong to outside of the Hell and determine where her place truly was. She absently skimmed her fingers over the puckered flesh on her opposite hand. The nicked skin, brutally and meticulously carved away, a testament to the truth that she could never truly belong here.

She’d long ago pledged to never bind herself to a man the way her mother had, not with her flesh, nor her heart, and certainly not her name. Now she appreciated how very easy it was to make those very mistakes.

“The marquess is waiting for you.”

The Duchess of Wilkinson’s sharp tone brought Helena’s head around. Robert.

The harsh glint in the woman’s eyes quelled Helena’s initial rush of pleasure and she slowly came to her feet, warily eying the other woman. For her brothers’ ribbing about her inability to accurately read a person’s character, they’d proven wholly wrong. The unrestrained hatred in the duchess’s gaze contained a level of evil to rival the darkest soul in the Dials. Apparently that emotion knew no regard for rank or title. Nor would it send a woman of the duchess’s station all the way to the gardens to announce Robert’s arrival. Such a task would be reserved for a servant.

“Your Grace,” she greeted, and started toward the doorway. A frown formed on Helena’s lips as the duchess pulled the door closed.

The woman flicked a glacial stare up and down Helena. Peeling her lip back in a sneer, she said more powerfully than any words could her every thought on her duke’s by-blow.

Helena didn’t care if the woman was a duchess, queen, or princess, she’d not be browbeaten. “If you’ll excuse me? Lord Westfield, as you indicated, is waiting.” She squared her shoulders, and used the additional four inches she had over the duchess to look down at the woman.

“I do not want you here, Miss Banbury.”

She stiffened.

Well, that made two of them. Or it had . . . Four days ago . . .

The duchess dusted her palms together. “Your mother was a whore,” the woman spoke with the same casualness she’d use if she’d remarked upon the weather. Helena schooled her features, while all the while rage slithered around. In living in the streets, you learned quickly that your enemies sought to uncover and exploit your weakness. If you revealed a crack, they’d slip in and destroy you. The older woman’s eyes disappeared within thin, narrow slits. “And with your wiles, you’ve stolen the attention of the marquess away from Diana. He’ll bed you, but he will never wed you.” Her voice shook with the force of her loathing.

At Helena’s continued silence, the duchess snapped. “Do you have nothing to say to that?”

Helena turned her lips in a slow, hard smile. “About my wiles? This is the first I’ve ever been credited with such.”

“Because of your scars?” The sharp, piercing, shriek-like quality of those hateful words hinted at a woman with a thin grasp on her control.

Helena nodded. “Yes. Because of my scars.” Those intersecting marks upon her person, as clear as numbers, that stood as testament to her origins and her very existence. If the duchess thought to use those old wounds to break her, she’d be very disappointed. She took a step around the duchess, when the woman shot a hand around her forearm, gripping her hard enough to raise bruises.

“The marquess will find out about you. He will find you are not one of us. Trash from the streets like your brother.”

Helena stared blankly down at those fingers upon her, crushing the flesh in a painful grip. It had been nearly nineteen years since she’d had a hand raised to her in violence. Distant cries from long ago echoed around her mind, stealing her breath . . . Ye brat . . . Oi should kill ye . . . Ryker’s enraged face, as a boy in the streets bloodying Diggory within an inch of his life, drove back the remembered horror. Then, that had been the man Ryker was. Fearless. Undaunted. The memory of that long-ago day brought Helena’s shoulders back. “My brother has more honor and worth in his smallest finger than you have in your entire person.” She leveled her with a look. “Now, unhand me, madam.”