The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(69)

She’d never survive three months more here. Not without losing her heart and her sanity.

She needed to go home.





Chapter 17


Rule 17


Nobles can never be trusted.

Shortly after Helena fled Ye Olde Bookshop, Robert had continued on to Oxford Street for his appointment. The reports remained as grim as they’d been since his first meeting with the aged man-of-affairs a month prior. The man, Stonely, was so mired in the past that despite Robert’s arguments to the contrary, he believed selling off all those late-made advancements of his grandfather was the only solution for the Dennington family.

Hours later, with his head bent over the ledgers, Robert squinted at the damned numbers. Except no matter how long he looked, not a blasted thing changed.

With a black curse, he dug his fingers into his temples and sat back in his chair.

Given the dire appointment with old Stonely, Robert ought to be attending the ledgers before him with far greater care.

Instead, Helena fully laid siege to his every thought. With their every meeting, his well-ordered world was becoming more and more muddied.

By God in hell—

He liked Helena Banbury.

Nay. He’d always liked her. Desired her. Admired her.

This discovery, however, was vastly different.

Robert stared absently down at the neat columns of grim numbers. He cared for her—a lot. His mind shied away from anything further. After all, his heart was incapable of more. He absently drummed the back of his pen on the open page. Particularly given that it had been just a week since the hellion who’d interrupted a tryst with Baroness Danvers had crashed into his world. The same vixen who’d threatened to gut him with a knife, and called into question his honor and his intelligence.

His lips twitched. And not only once.

Yes, for all that—he cared for her.

Are you familiar with Argand’s work, my lord? . . . He is responsible for the geometrical interpretation of complex numbers . . .

She enjoyed mathematics and fashioned herself as something of a bluestocking. She didn’t give a jot that he would one day be a duke. And she placed the safety of a child’s life on the street before her own.

With a groan, he tossed his pen down. It landed on the desk with a soft thunk. In truth, how could one not like Helena Banbury? She was refreshingly honest amidst a sea of falsity, and more . . . she was a woman of strength who’d shown more courage defending a boy in the streets than the combined strength of an entire regiment in the King’s army. He pulled open his center desk drawer and withdrew a heavy dagger, crusted with rubies, turning it over in his hands.

It had been far easier when he didn’t like her, and simply felt a sense of obligation to right the wrong that he’d inadvertently done that drunken night at the Hell and Sin. He touched the tip of his finger to the sharp blade and a single drop of blood pebbled. Staring at the fleck of crimson, his mind raced.

He’d resolved to never be a fool again where a young woman was concerned. Lucy’s treachery had made him wary of the motives of all. Robert wiped the blood from his finger, then scrubbed his hands over his face. When he was with Helena Banbury, however, he didn’t think of Lucy and the bitterness of her betrayal . . . or his grandfather’s hand in that awakening. He simply thought—of her. Helena Banbury with her reddish-brown hair and blunt honesty.

How could he possibly forget twelve years of bitterness after knowing a lady but a week? Because she’d forced him to see aspects of who he was, and how other people lived, in ways that he’d selfishly failed to note. He’d spent years despising his grandfather and Lucy Whitman for the ugliness in their souls, but what about who Robert had been?

I’m not reckless . . . I wager no more than most gentlemen . . . I keep one mistress and I’m careful to never beget a bastard on those women . . .

Those words he’d tossed at his father now floated back, words he’d uttered as a statement of his character.

Filled with a restlessness, Robert tossed Helena’s dagger down and strode over to the sideboard. Grabbing the nearest decanter and snifter, he proceeded to pour himself a glass and then took a long, slow swallow, welcoming the warm trail it blazed.

He’d always known precisely what his responsibilities were as future duke—those realities never more clear with all his father had imparted. Though he was unwed still at three and thirty, he’d every intention of doing right by the line . . . just not to save the family from financial ruin. To do so would be bartering his own self-worth when he’d long condemned Lucy Whitman for that same ruthlessness.

I’m not worried about you being the same as other noblemen . . . I worry about you setting yourself apart from them . . .

Those words once tossed at him by his father were now sharpened with an acuity he’d previously lacked—because of Helena. He stared down into his drink. Years ago, he’d determined the exact manner of woman he would wed. She would be a lady of the ton, whose open desire of his title would be the only honesty he’d come to hope for.

Now there was Helena, a woman who, even if he wished to make her his future duchess, would sooner return to that notorious club than be married to him. He frowned into the contents of his drink. Not that he wished to wed her. He didn’t.

There were too many reasons not to. Her disdain for polite Society, a sentiment he could, on most days, easily share. But more importantly, there was the life she wished for. Robert swirled the contents of his drink in a circle.