The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(59)

A groan lodged in his chest. “Helena . . .” He was useless. Utterly useless, incapable of any words that could or would ever be able to erase the suffering she’d known.

Then, in the midst of the darkness of her story, she did something he suspected, even when he was one of those old, doddering dukes with a cane and monocle, he would forever recall—she smiled. Such joy lit her face that a powerful warmth exploded inside him. Something intangible and terrifying that he could not sort out in this moment.

“There was a time I could not speak of those days. I called them my ‘dark days.’ You never forget what it is to have a hungry belly, wondering and worrying about where your next meal will come from, but as time passes, and you have food, and a home, and safety, you begin to appreciate all you had to do in order to survive.” She again tipped her face up toward the sun. “And there is something very wonderful about surviving.”

Oh God, with her every unwitting admission, agony tore at Robert’s heart, threatening to cleave him open. While he’d been a boy tying together his mother’s fine linens and learning to ride his first mount, she’d been a girl who’d hunted flowers in the stone, and pillaged for food. Emotion wadded in his throat, and he struggled to get words past it.

She was far braver than he ever had been, or ever would be. Selfishly he’d come without a servant so he could be alone with her. Now with that faraway glimmer in her eyes, he wished he’d brought someone to attend his bloody carriage. So he could escort her down, and lead her through those gardens he’d never before noticed, never would have noticed, until her.

Relinquishing his death grip on the reins, he claimed her left hand. Slowly, he pulled off one of her gloves.

She made a sound of protest, but he continued on to the next so that her palms lay bare between them. “What happened?” he asked quietly, stroking his thumb over the scars on the top of her hand.

A sheen of tears filled Helena’s eyes, and she averted her gaze. When she looked back, the familiar strength radiated in the depths of her green eyes so that those fleeting mementos of sadness may as well have been imagined. “I prefer to think about bouquets of red cabbage, Robert.” He wished to press her for everything she withheld. Wished to know everything when he had no right. But somewhere, in the course of four days and a chance meeting at gaming hell a month earlier, this fiery woman who’d openly challenged him in Lord Sinclair’s parlor had slipped past his defenses.

And for the first time since Lucy’s betrayal, Robert wished his heart were intact . . . because Helena Banbury would have been a woman worthy of it.

Another quiet laugh spilled past her lips, rusty as though from ill use. “I suspect we’ve been here a sufficient amount of time? We’ve been seen?”

The pretend courtship. Her fleeting time here. And her eventual return to the Hell and Sin Club. He imagined her reentering that world, amongst lascivious lords and powerful proprietors of that hell . . . and something dark, and primitive, roared to life.

Robert gave thanks for the years of practice he had of false smiles, for he forced his lips upwards in a half grin. “Indeed, Miss Banbury. Shall we return?”

“I’ll . . . see you tomorrow then?” Was there truly a hopeful quality to that hesitant question, or did he simply wish there to be?

He tweaked her nose. “I am afraid tomorrow, I’ve a previous engagement.”

This time, there was no imagining the crestfallen expression that fell over her face and a lightness filled him.

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I was just wondering. Curious. Given the true nature of our . . . our arrangement; however, we do not need to see one another every day.”

“What if I say I want to?” The hushed question left his lips before he could recall it.

And just like that, their world was restored. Helena rolled her eyes to the sky. “I’m not one of your conquests you need to waste your words on, Robert. It is not my intention to take you away from your . . . pleasures.”

He flexed his jaw. Long ago he’d earned the status of rogue and it had been one he relished. Never more had he despised that reputation than with her flippant charge. For the time they’d spent together, short though it was, did she still only see him as a lord living for nothing but his own pleasures?

“My family is in deep,” he said in solemn tones.

Her gaze shot to his. Then, like a fish plucked from the sea, she opened and closed her mouth. “What?” Consternation weighted that word.

Robert expected there should be suitable reservations in confiding this secret. If it were discovered, it would open his sister and father up to nasty gossip, and where he didn’t give a jot about what they said of him, there was Bea to protect. But he’d no doubt in trusting Helena with this.

“My grandfather made some substantial investments,” he said finally, keeping his stare forward. “And our pockets are nearly to let for it.”

“What type of investments?”

Once again, she held him frozen in awe for how unique she was to all other ladies he’d ever known. With his revelation, any other woman would have been slack-jawed with shock or disdain, and yet Helena spoke with a rational precision better suited to a skilled man-of-affairs.

“Steam,” he said.

“You are certain it is so very . . .” Her eyes raced quickly over his face. “Dire.”