The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(71)

Robert offered a deep bow. “Of course, Your Grace.” He followed her to the door, and reached for the handle.

“Again, I thank you for your prudence with this matter. Given my relationship with your father and the late duchess, I would see you protected from Miss Banbury’s machinations.”

Smoothing her palms over her skirt, she gave a slight, dismissive, very duchess-like nod, and he drew the door open.

As she took her leave, he closed it, and stared at the wood panel. His mind spun with the charges and accusations leveled by the duchess. Charges and accusations that could never be true about Helena Banbury. Except . . . what was she doing at Lambeth this morn, alone . . . ? With a curse, he stalked to the front of the room and yanked the door open, bellowing for his carriage.

The duchess’s warnings harkened back to those issued by another. Warnings given twelve years ago by a hardened duke who’d seen the treachery in Lucy Whitman when Robert had been blinded.

Surely he’d not be a fool twice where young women were concerned?

He frowned as a wave of guilt assailed him at that willingness to believe ill of her. Helena did not even belong in the same category of a woman such as Lucy. Those two were nothing alike.

Except in his weakness for them.





Chapter 18


Rule 18


Danger comes in many shapes and forms.

A person could never forget the smells and sounds of St Giles. The dank scent of refuse and rot permeated the air, penetrating the carriage.

Seated as she’d been for the past thirty minutes, Helena sat on the uncomfortable bench of the hired hack, and closing her eyes, welcomed the familiarity of it all.

Here, in these rough, dark streets, life made sense in a way she understood.

She opened her eyes and stared out the ripped curtain.

Amidst a sea of dark, cracked, and crumbling buildings stood one impressive stucco structure. Awash in candlelight, it conveyed a sense of day amongst night. She touched her fingertips to the muddied windowpane. This hell represented an escape from her past, and a solid, certain future. Her ruthless brother had sent her away as a test of sorts.

After questioning her judgment from one chance encounter with a nobleman, Ryker singlehandedly decided her fate. He’d scuttled her off to Mayfair. For his ill opinion in her judgment, she was not her mother.

Or she’d told herself that for the course of her life. Several dandies crossed the street, climbing the steps of the Hell and Sin. The club doors opened, and the light cast by crystal chandeliers spilled onto the front stoop. And then closed once more.

Helena pressed her forehead against the warm windowpane. In the end, she’d proven Ryker correct in all his worst suppositions about her.

She had been weak. Only she had been seduced, not by fine fabrics and pretty baubles, but by kindness. She had entered the world of polite Society resolved to hating everything and everyone connected with that world. And here she sat, her heart hopelessly belonging to a future duke.

A broken laugh spilled past her lips, and she buried it in her hands. Oh, it was the manner of irony the Great Bard himself could not have crafted better. The bastard daughter of a duke, who’d judged her own mother, had committed the same folly.

She let her trembling hand fall to her lap. If she spent the remaining days and months with Robert, amongst the haute ton, she would lose every part of herself that she valued. She’d abandon every pledge she’d taken.

She needed to leave that world, and return here.

Letting the curtain fall into place, Helena drew her cloak hood up and reached for the handle.

Her fingers froze, and she stared blankly at her scarred hand.

For if she climbed those steps and disappeared inside, she would never, ever see Robert again, but for perhaps nights when he visited the hell. Time would pass, and she would continue tending her books, and he would carry on as he had before he’d agreed to her madcap scheme. Then he would marry and have perfect, flawless noble English babes. Vicious blades of jealousy ravaged her.

Helena dug her fingertips into her temples and rubbed. Indecision raged in her breast.

If she did step out of this carriage and demand to be seen, always unbending, would Ryker even take her back until the terms of the agreement he’d laid out had been met?

With quick movements Helena pressed the handle and stepped down from the carriage. She cast a look up at the driver perched atop the box. “Wait for me and there will be more,” she pledged, handing over several coins. Standing in watch, as a pair of stumbling fops climbed the steps of the club, she waited until they’d entered the Hell and then gingerly picked her way across the street.

She’d grown up here. Had known no other way of living until just a month and a week ago, and yet dread raced along her spine. The sense of being watched. Inaction in the Dials often meant death, and yet she went still. Her gaze strayed to a solitary figure leaning against a dilapidated building. A cap pulled low over his eyes, the man remained with his arms folded. He shoved the hat back and grinned coldly. Diggory.

Oi’ll beat ye until ye listen, girl . . .

She swayed dizzily, and wrapped her hand about a nearby lamppost to keep herself upright. A scream built inside and hovered on her lips.

Raucous laughter spilled into her whirring nightmare, and she opened her eyes. Blinking, Helena looked to that broken-down building for that hated figure.

Except for the dandies entering Ryker’s club, not a soul lingered. Some of the tension left her. What weakness had overtaken her since she’d left this world that she’d made monsters out of shadows? It only affirmed how very desperately she needed to be back. Drawing the hood of her cloak further over her forehead, she burrowed inside, and quickened her stride.