The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(58)

And Robert wanted the name of the person so he could take them apart with his bare hands, and stuff his limbs into his bloody mouth. From the corner of his eye, Robert evaluated Helena. She leaned against the seat, her eyes closed. Her face relaxed, showing no hint of the guardedness that she cloaked herself in. Using her distraction, he fixed on the rippled flesh of her right cheek.

Until now, he’d not allowed himself to think about how a young woman came by those marks. Coward as he was, he wished to believe they were marks of her birth.

He was a nobleman; however, he was no fool. Someone had hurt her—and badly. The kind of hurt that moved beyond the physical and stretched into every aspect of a person’s existence.

Twelve years ago, inside his grandfather’s office, he’d bore witness to depravity and ugliness. But he’d wager his very soul on Sunday that what someone had done to Helena was the level of evil that indelibly marked a person.

Robert fisted the reins.

Only, it hadn’t been any person—it had been Helena Banbury with her bold and unflagging spirit.

Even though in just three months’ time she would leave, return to the Hell and Sin, and he’d never again see her but for, perhaps, maybe a glimpse if he visited the club, he wanted to know—about her and the secrets she carried.

They arrived at Hyde Park, and Robert shifted the reins, guiding the curricle through the quiet path, onward.

“You do not say much do you, Helena Banbury?”

She opened her eyes. “No.”

They shared a smile.

“My brothers often teased that I was far more comfortable with numbers than people.”

He started. “You have brothers.” Of course she’d just indicated as much. But how odd he’d not known that particular detail.

Helena nodded. “One brother and . . .” She scrunched her mouth. “Three who, though I don’t share blood with them, are more family than my actual father.”

How casually she spoke of three men who were not related to her by blood. That piece she shared would have shocked any member of polite Society. In what capacity had she known those men? Questions tumbled around his mind. She’d called them brothers, but had there been one of those men who’d, in fact, been more to her? Had one been a lover with whom she’d resided at the Hell and Sin? Robert gripped the reins hard as a seething jealousy worked its way through him like a slow-moving cancer.

“You are shocked,” she observed when he still said nothing.

“I shock far less easily than you believe.” In a bid to conceal the volatile emotion thrumming through him, he winked.

They reached Kensington Gardens and Robert brought the curricle to a stop. Birds happily chirped their morning songs, while the thin branches of nearby elms danced gently in the spring breeze.

“They are beautiful.”

The soft, wistful quality of Helena’s voice carried to his ears.

Robert followed her gaze to the floral gateway that spilled into Kensington Gardens. Colorful blooms lined each side of the graveled path.

“The flowers,” she clarified.

“Do you know, in all my rides through Hyde Park, I’ve never much noticed them?” he admitted. When in London, he rode through Hyde Park nearly every morning. Yet, he’d never looked about him. Not truly. Not in the way she now gazed almost longingly at those blooms.

Her startled gaze shot to his. “Surely not.”

“Surely,” he said, hating the flash of disappointment in her eyes. She’d found him wanting. The death of her smile and glimmer in her eyes said as much.

She stared out at the blanket of purple flowers with their yellow centers. “I’ve never left London.”

He blinked at that sudden change in conversation.

“I have always lived here,” she continued, a faraway quality to her husky contralto. “First, in a townhouse rented by the duke and then . . .” She breathed slowly through her lips. “Then, we lived in a small room in St Giles.” His heart hitched. St Giles was a place safe for no man, woman, or beast, and certainly not a child. He struggled to draw breath. What hell must she have known? “I always wanted to go to the country.” She may as well have spoken of her preference of milk and sugar with tea. “My mother grew up in Kent and she spoke of the blue skies and fields of wildflowers, and I could not believe there was a place where flowers just . . . grew. How could that be?” she asked softly, a faint smile on her lips. “How when there are only grounds of stone and dirt?”

A weight pressed on his chest.

“There were many days we didn’t have food.” She motioned to the purple flowers. “I was in the streets where shopkeepers would empty the refuse and one day I saw this . . . blanket of purple lying upon the streets.” A soft laugh escaped her, and she gave her head a wistful shake. “I raced over believing I’d found the flowers my mother spoke of.” She paused. “They weren’t.”

“What were they?” he managed; all the while shame ate away at him, and he hated a world in which a small Helena Banbury had foraged for food like a starving pup, just as much as he hated himself for a self-absorption that had prevented him from truly seeing those children about him.

Flecks of silver danced in her eyes, as she leaned up toward him. “They were red cabbage leaves,” she whispered. “I’d found something more magnificent than even flowers. I would pretend I was in a meadow, collecting flowers, but then we could cook those leaves and eat them, too.”