The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(74)

“My grandfather, the then Duke of Somerset, didn’t find her . . .” His lip peeled back. “Suitable material for a future duchess. I did not care. I would have married her anyway and to hell with him and Society. We planned to elope.”

A knife-like pain shot through her. Unlike her father who’d made Helena’s mother his mistress and nothing more, this was the manner of man Robert Dennington, the Marquess of Westfield, was, then and now. One who’d turn his finger up at the rules and do so for women such as a maid and a bookkeeper. To be the woman deserving of that devotion.

“My grandfather summoned me the day we were to wed. I went to his office.” He cleared his throat. “He was . . .” Robert shook his head. “It is hardly fit for a lady’s ears.”

“I’m not a lady,” she blurted.

Robert ran a tender gaze over her face. “You’re more lady than most queens, Helena Banbury.”

Warmth exploded in her heart. Not a single person, in the whole of her life, had treated her as anything more than a woman who’d climbed from the streets. Even her brothers had so clearly attached that part to each of their individual stories, it had become an inextricable fabric of who they were. Yet, this man before her saw more. “Tell me,” she urged, wanting the details he withheld. Needing them.

He hesitated and for a long while she expected he’d say nothing. Then: “Lucy was there.” Lucy. The woman had a name, which made her unknown-until-now rival all the more real and hated. “With my grandfather.”

His words penetrated her blinding jealousy. Helena slowly blinked. Surely she’d misheard? Surely he’d not said . . . ?

“They were together,” he confirmed with a curt nod.

Oh, God. Agony ran through her in sharp, torrential waves. At the hurt he’d known, and no doubt still did. Was it a wonder he was mistrustful of women of her station? “Oh, Robert,” she said, softly covering his gloved hand with hers.

He glanced down at their connected hands. “My life is not yours, Helena,” he said matter-of-factly. “I did not live in these dangerous streets and I’ve certainly not known the pain you have. But money and status does not make a person immune to emotion or life.”

And yet, she’d gone through her own life naively believing that very thing. Believing that lords and ladies did not feel pain or hurt, and certainly not the treachery he’d spoken of.

His words hung in the air between them, and as they sat in silence for a long while, Helena wished she were one of those skilled with words and not her practical use of numbers, because then she’d have something to say to all Robert had shared.

He motioned to the door. “Would you have me escort you home?”

Her throat closed around the emotion stuck there. He would do that. He would guide her across the street so she might see her family and plead for the opportunity to return now. She should be touched by that gesture and yet . . . his gesture left her with a hollow emptiness. He’d let her go so easily. How to explain the part of her that wanted him to want her to be here . . . ?

I am not ready . . .

She shook her head. “I’d return to the duke’s,” she said quietly.

Robert rapped on the roof. Helena blinked. “What of your carriage?”

“Do you think I’d leave you alone?” he asked quietly. Oh, God. Her heart convulsed, making it impossible to drag forth a single breath. Why did he have to be so bloody caring? To the boy James. To her. It only confounded her already muddied thoughts. “I’ll return for it after I’ve escorted you home.”

A moment later, the hired hack lurched forward, with Helena’s world all the more confused.



Later that night, Robert climbed the steps of his father’s townhouse, this hated home he’d feared as a child and reviled as a young man betrayed by his grandfather.

Just as every loyal butler to ever serve these halls was trained to do, the door was promptly drawn open.

Davidson stepped out of the way, permitting him entry. “My lord,” he greeted, accepting Robert’s hat. It was a testament to the servant’s reserve that he betrayed no surprise at Robert’s late-night visit. “His Grace has retired for the evening. Should I—?”

“I do not require His Grace,” he murmured, turning his cloak over.

The servant bowed and backed out of the foyer, his footsteps echoing in the nighttime quiet. Robert did a small turn about this hated foyer. How many times as a child had he shifted in this very room, dreading those required visits with the great Dennington patriarch? Now he stood here a man still bound by the unrelenting grasp of the past on his present.

Robert started down the corridor, walking with purposeful strides toward one particular room. He came to a stop outside his father’s office, the same space his grandfather had once held dominion over. Pressing the handle, Robert stepped inside.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the inky darkness. When it did, he closed the door behind him, and made his way to the broad, mahogany desk.

He stared emptily at the immaculate surface where the late duke had taken Lucy like a corner doxy. That had been the single most defining moment of Robert’s life, the one in which he’d resurrected protective walls designed to keep all women out—even in the ways that most mattered. It had proven safer that way. Better to have nothing but meaningless exchanges than the jagged agony of betrayal and pain. He’d been moving along quite contentedly, too.