The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(75)

Until Helena.

Helena, who’d slipped past every defense and slid inside, properly turning his world on its ear.

And who in the span of the evening had proven how little he in fact mattered to her.

Robert drew his hand back and strolled behind the desk once occupied by the late duke, and now the current . . . a chair that would one day, hopefully not until the far-distant future, belong to him. He sank into the edges of the leather wingback seat, and glued his gaze to the place Lucy and his grandfather had fornicated all those years ago.

At the time, there had been no greater despair than witnessing a woman he’d trusted, and believed himself in love with, in the arms of another, his grandfather no less. It had cemented the reality that women, regardless of station or lot in life, would never see anything more than a future title in him.

Then, one drunken evening, he’d stumbled inside the wrong chambers, and now there was Helena Banbury, a woman who didn’t give a bloody damn if he was duke, king, or pauper. Robert brushed his palm along the edge of the desk. And she had thrown into question everything he’d come to accept as fact where women were concerned.

Helena was a woman of strength and spirit who’d battered down every flimsy wall he’d constructed, and who’d in the span of this evening had proven, once again, how very little he mattered. She was the sister of gaming hell owners, men who’d no doubt built an empire in ways that would curdle a weaker man’s blood . . . and knowing that, accepting that, it mattered not. She had mattered. Too much.

He swiped a wary hand over his face. Had the duchess not come to him with Helena’s whereabouts, she’d have disappeared from his life for good. Those moments he’d built up as something so much more, something real and beautiful, she would have forsaken.

Nay, she would eventually forsake. Her words tonight could have not been clearer. She didn’t wish to be part of his world . . . whether he was in it or not. Yet again proving that women ultimately did not choose him. They chose wealth or power, as Lucy had shown. Or, in Helena’s case, chose a previous life and profession.

He let his hand fall back to the desk. He’d do well to remember the folly in caring too deeply. What existed had only been something he’d built to be more in his own mind.

There remained three additional months with her. Three months to retain his sanity and a hold on his heart. He’d been a rake for twelve years. How difficult could it be to retain that former way and wear the false, practiced smile and give Helena nothing more than charming words? To give her more was a peril he could never recover from.

Ultimately, women did not choose him. Lucy hadn’t. Tonight, with the ease with which she’d nearly left his life, Helena had proven it, too.

He’d do well to not forget that again.





Chapter 19


Rule 19


Decide your own fate.

Helena stood on the fringe of the Duke and Duchess of Wilkinson’s ballroom, distractedly eying the festivities.

Through the whole of the receiving line, with bated breath, she’d looked for a single guest . . . with an anticipation that had nothing to do with the ruse she’d asked him to be part of. She ran her gaze over the sea of guests twirling about the dance floor. Whispers and polite laughter filled the room in a cacophony of muted sound.

How very miserable she’d been when Ryker had first sent her to this place. She was as much an outsider here as a fish pulled ashore to live on land, with the breath being slowly choked from her. Until Robert. Until him, she’d not known she could smile or laugh or be happy in this place. Nor had she believed men of his station capable of being hurt or knowing suffering. Last night, he’d lifted the blinders from her eyes and she was shamed by her very narrow view on living and life.

Now that she did know it, she didn’t know what to do with that discovery. For ultimately, it changed nothing. She was still who she was: a bookkeeper at the Hell and Sin Club who wished for control in her life when women were lacking in it. He was a marquess and future duke who’d been betrayed by a woman not far off from Helena’s station. Why, no doubt when she took her leave in two months and three weeks’ time, he’d forget her altogether. Helena caught her lower lip between her teeth, hating that. And hating herself for the vicious pain that truth caused.

There was a faint stir at the front of the ballroom, and she looked to the entrance.

Her breath caught.

Standing at the top of the white Italian marble staircase, Robert surveyed the ballroom with a lazy elegance. The chandelier’s glow cast a soft light on his luxuriant, golden tresses and she ached with the need to run her fingers through those faintly curled strands.

As he made his descent, the flurry of whispers increased. Scandalously clad ladies with plunging décolletage touched their fingers to their chests as he moved past them. Debutantes fluttered their lashes. Never breaking his forward stride, he lifted his head in a vague politeness, revealing that lazy half grin that dulled the pain of rejection.

A rogue. He was a rogue in every sense of the word . . . and she’d fallen hopelessly under his spell. Helena momentarily closed her eyes. She’d entered polite Society with clear expectations of him . . . and for herself. She wasn’t the weak ninny who’d ever fall as her mother had. Only heartbreak and heartache came in loving these men.

Yet, that is what I’ve done.

When she opened her eyes, she found his gaze on her, robbing her lungs of air. The veiled, potent stare that had the power to make her feel as though she were the only woman in the ballroom. Then he smiled, and her heart quickened for altogether different reasons. For this was not the false rogue’s grin he donned for the peers, but rather that smile that reached his eyes.