The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(57)

The duchess released her suddenly. “My daughter was born to be a duchess, and you’ve inserted yourself in this family,” she seethed. “Just as your mother inserted herself in my husband’s life. So you may bed Lord Westfield, but he will belong to Diana. Is that clear?”

“She doesn’t want to wed him,” she shot back.

“It matters not what she wants. It matters what she was born to.” Just as it hadn’t mattered to Ryker what Helena wished. Regardless of birthright, decisions were made for women. Robert belonged with a woman of his station, and when he should wed, Diana, in her kindness and properness, would make him an ideal bride. Even with the girl’s protestations, she would be no match for her parents’ desires for her. Those two families would one day unite, and Robert would no doubt see himself to Diana. A dagger-like pain stabbed at her chest.

“I see you understand,” the duchess said, searching her gaze over her face, and Helena hated being exposed before this ruthless woman. “I’ve no problem if you bed him,” she said, the way she might offer a guest the last pastry on a refreshment tray. “As long as you do not think to make yourself a duchess. You are not one of us, Miss Banbury. It is important you remember that.”

How could she ever forget such a detail when Society had ingrained that lesson into her since the moment she’d come wailing into the world? Still knowing it, accepting it, that savage blade turned all the more. “You may go to hell,” she bit out, ringing a gasp from the other woman.

Helena yanked the door open and strode the same halls she’d wandered yesterday when Robert had led her to the gardens and awakened her body to a dangerous desire. The duchess’s unneeded reminder only heightened the truth of that great divide between Robert and her. From their births, they’d been each set upon a different course. Even his talk of his childhood had marked that gulf. He, a child who’d had guest chambers and soaring foyers and played, and Helena, who’d . . .

There were bannisters. She jerked to a stop and stared unblinkingly at the end of the long corridor.

I slid down the bannisters whenever the duke came to call . . . and he would laugh and capture me in his arms . . .

Her lower lip quivered, and she pressed her eyes firmly shut against the force of that long-buried memory, unleashed by Robert’s laughing revelation yesterday afternoon. Helena fisted her hands in her skirts. She did not want those memories. She did not want to think of life as it had been in those short five years before her world had been filled with violence and evil.

Coming to the moment, Helena continued onward to the foyer.

Robert stood, head bent as he consulted his timepiece. At the sight of him, not even a day after he’d strummed her body with his skilled touch, heat exploded in her cheeks. By his actions yesterday, and the duchess’s accusations a short while ago, they no doubt expected her to be a skilled whore long past shame.

At the sound of her approach, he glanced up and she braced for the leers she’d observed on the faces of too many gentlemen inside the Hell and Sin. He smiled. “Helena,” he greeted, dropping a short bow.

Blast him. Emotion lodged in her throat. Why must he continue to unsettle her world by contradicting everything she expected where powerful peers were concerned? “My lord,” she said softly, as he took her gloved fingers in his. He bowed over her hand, and then made to pick his head up—and froze.

A hard, lethal sheen iced his eyes, and she staggered back under the force of that emotion. He held tight, and she followed his brutal stare to the finger marks on her forearm. No one except her family at the Hell and Sin had ever radiated such palpable rage over the marks left by another on Helena’s skin. She captured the inside of her lip between her teeth, hating that his volatile reaction should so matter.

Quickly disentangling her hand from his, Helena accepted the cloak from a footman with a word of thanks, eternally grateful as those bright red marks were concealed. Next, she collected her bonnet, placed it on her head, and neatly tied the ribbons under her chin.

The butler drew the door open and she hurried outside.

Wordlessly, Robert handed her up into the curricle, and climbed in behind her. A moment later, he snapped the reins and the carriage lurched forward. She closed her eyes and welcomed the gentle spring breeze slapping at her face. Mayhap he’d let the matter rest.

His gaze trained on the busy streets ahead, Robert asked in crisp tones, “Who put their hands on you?”

She sighed. “No one.” The lie formed easily. She didn’t care to speak about the duchess or her dark words.

“Helena,” he growled, and his knuckles whitened over the reins.

“I slid down a bannister.”

He briefly shifted his attention from the road to Helena, and then retrained his attention forward.

Helena plucked at the fabric of her skirt. “You asked if I was a mischievous child. Whenever my . . . the duke,” she quickly amended. She’d ceased seeing the Duke of Wilkinson as her father long, long ago. “Came to visit, I would straddle the bannister and shimmy down, and he would capture me in a hug and swing me about.” Not the actions of a man who’d then easily cut his mistress and child from his fold, and yet . . . that is what had happened. “I forgot that until now,” she murmured. “Until you shared your story.”



Someone had put their hands on her.