The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(60)

He gave a rusty chuckle. “Oh, quite. I’ve been in frequent meetings and short of letting go the whole of our servants, selling off unentailed properties, and abandoning those steam ventures, there are few options, except . . .” He grimaced, and promptly firmed his mouth.

“What?” she asked, too clever to ever miss that telling word.

A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. “My father would tell you the only option is for me to marry an heiress.” As soon as that admission left his mouth, he cursed.

Helena swiveled her gaze up to his.

And he, long jaded by life, found his neck going hot with embarrassment . . . and shame. He forced another laugh, and it emerged sharp with enmity. “He wished it so much that he’d even faked he was dying and staged a summer party to marry me off, all with the purpose of salvaging our depleting coffers.” Once again, the still-fresh resentment brewed under the surface, and threatened to spill over.

“Oh, Robert.” Helena covered his hand with hers, pulling him from the brink of bitterness. “And you do not wish to save your family’s fortune that way.” As hers was more statement than anything, he remained silent. Helena caught her jaw between her thumb and forefinger and tapped. “You’re certain there are no other ways. That the man-of-affairs is competent?”

Actually, for his father’s faith in the man, Robert wasn’t entirely certain of the aging man’s skills. With Stonely’s disdain for investments, he very much harkened back to rigid strictures on nobles dabbling in trade. “I believe my family would do better with someone more capable,” he settled for.

“Perhaps I can look at your—”

“Let us speak of something else,” he said quietly. Shame needled at his insides. What a purposeless existence he’d lived for so long. All Helena had shared this day, and she would worry with her eyes and words about his family’s finances. Finances he’d not given thought to in the course of his life. “Please,” he added, when she made to speak. “I just wished you to know why I cannot visit on the morrow.” Even as I desire it more than anything. More than is wise.

She gave a reluctant nod.

As he gathered the reins and guided the carriage from Hyde Park, he reflected on what an utter fool he’d been these years.

How much he’d failed to see. Not only his family’s finances, but beyond that. To something so much more important—the suffering others had endured around him. And how much more he would have failed to see if he’d not stumbled into the wrong chambers in that forbidden hell.





Chapter 15


Rule 15


Always remember who you are.

The following morning, standing in front of the bevel mirror, Helena’s pale cheeks stood in even greater contrast than usual. She stared unflinchingly at the puckered scars, seeing them, remembering: remembering when of late it had become so very easy to forget that this was not her world. To remember that she belonged elsewhere.

Helena touched trembling fingers to the scars left by Diggory’s cruel enjoyments, a forever visual testimony of her place in the well-ordered world. She might don fancy skirts and learn the steps of a waltz, but she was, and would always and only be, Helena Banbury, the daughter of a whore.

And two days earlier she’d proven herself, very much, her mother’s daughter. For she’d panted, pleaded, and writhed on Robert’s lap like a common street doxy. She let her arm fall quavering to her side. If he’d continued, she would have given herself to him. There in the duchess’s gardens, she would have parted her legs, and given him her virtue without a single stab of regret. Nor had it been strictly this physical hungering that only he’d ever roused in her.

. . . So beautiful . . .

Her eyes slid closed, and she drew in a slow, shaky breath. When he’d spoken that word, blanketed in a thick cloud of desire, she had actually believed it. Felt it. Felt she was more than Helena from the streets—all because of his skilled, seductive words.

Only yesterday, something far more dangerous than any forbidden touch had happened. She’d shared stories of her girlhood days, stories she’d shared with no one. Parts of her life that not even her brothers spoke of. You let the past stay buried.

But she hadn’t. She, who’d always been terse and silent, had talked. And talked. And continued talking, telling stories she’d not even remembered until they were spilling from her lips.

Helena jammed her fingertips against her temples and rubbed. This was all careening out of control. The scheme she’d concocted involving the marquess had been simple. Three months together, where he’d pretend to court her, until the end of the Season, when she was then free to go on her practical way back to the Hell and Sin.

What a mocking twist of fate or irony, or both, that in a mere four days, he’d upended her thoughts.

In all her calculations and practical deductions, she’d not accounted for the possibility of not only desiring Robert, but also . . . liking him. Of seeing a man who’d once been a boy who tied sheets together and dangled over ledges. A boy who’d become a man who spoke affectionately to old dukes. A man in need of a fortune, and who’d willingly helped her anyway and forsaken plans that could have saved his family’s finances. She dragged her hands over her face. Those discoveries didn’t fit with everything she’d come to know. With everything she’d been told or seen.