The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(79)

“Helena,” he urged, his harsh, primitive growl rumbling around them.

She managed to nod. A sweat-dampened strand fell over her eye and with a tenderness that threatened to shatter her, he brushed it back.

Then he cupped her cheek.

That flawed, ugly, rippled part of her flesh. And for the first time since Diggory had silenced her tears, she let them fall freely and unchecked. She drew in a gasping breath, and she wept, dimly registering as Robert gathered her against his chest, holding her as though she were a cherished treasure. Her shoulders shook from the force of her sobs and she cried until her body ached with the force of her despair.

Robert cradled her close, his arms wrapped around her.

But he did not say anything. He did not whisper platitudes or ask questions or urge her to silence. And she took that offering. Crying for the child she’d never been. And for the torture she’d endured. She cried for the emptiness that had been her mother’s existence. And she cried for everything she now wanted that could never be. Her tears dissolved into slow, shuddery hiccupping gasps, and she remained there clinging to Robert.

Robert settled onto the ground and shifted her in his arms, moving her closer, and she turned her scarred cheek against the place his heart pounded. Closing her eyes, she breathed in deep the sandalwood scent that clung to him. She closed her eyes. All these years she’d believed tears weakened a person. That had been a rule ingrained into her early on beside her brothers. Calm stole over her, despite the lessons about those salty mementos. Now she found how wrong her brothers had been. Those tears offered healing and peace. Robert rubbed smoothing circles over her back and she leaned into his caress.

During the course of her life, she’d moved from a townhouse to a one-room residence, to London streets, and eventually to one of the greatest gaming establishments to rise in England.

Never had she felt any of them was a home.

And in Robert’s arms, she found that home was not walls and a roof after all.

It was a person.





Chapter 20


Rule 20


Never cry.

By his birthright, Robert was in possession of five unentailed properties and more than fifteen hundred acreages. He’d inherit seven entailed properties; a crumbling empire, rapidly bleeding money.

In this moment, with Helena in his arms, he’d have gladly turned over all his land holdings, including his life if asked for it, to spare her the pain that had sent her fleeing to the gardens.

Robert reached between them and fished a kerchief from his pocket. He handed it over to her.

Helena accepted it with a murmured thanks and then blew noisily into the fabric. She fiddled with the edges of the fabric, and then set it aside on the graveled path.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Her tear-roughened voice faintly reached his ears.

Attuned to this woman as he’d never been with another, Robert had spied Helena as she’d spun on her heel and fled the ballroom as though the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels. In that moment, the Devil himself could not have compelled him to remain dancing with Lady Diana or any other. “I should be where you are,” he returned; placing his lips against her temple, he tucked another brown strand behind her ear.

She drew back. Her tear-reddened eyes scoured his face. “Because of the courtship.” Her words emerged flat.

He swallowed around a ball of emotion. Last evening, he’d resolved to keep her out of his heart. What a fool he’d been. He was powerless to her hold.

How could she not know the hold she had on him? He gave her as much of the truth as he could manage in this jumbled moment. “Because I want to be where you are.” Robert brushed his lips over her damp, satiny lashes, wanting the demons that haunted her so he could make them his own.

They sat, with birds chirping their night song overhead. He ran his hands in small circles over her back—

“I was quiet.”

He paused midmovement, but did not release her from the strong, reassuring warmth of his embrace.

“You asked once what I was like as a child. I was quiet.”

With those thirteen words, she’d let him in. And until she’d uttered them, he’d not appreciated how desperately he wanted to be here, knowing everything there was about Helena Banbury.

“I wasn’t always,” she said more to herself. “I used to chatter like a magpie, my mother said.” A wistful smile pulled at her lips and he imagined a small Helena Banbury with questions and stories flowing from her lips. “I didn’t even know what a magpie was.” Then her smile slipped, and it had the same effect as the night driving back the day sky. “We were happy for five years, until a . . . gentleman arrived one day and told us the duke had tired of my mother. We were turned out. As a young girl, I could not understand how anyone could let her go.” The duke had let both mother and daughter go that day. Did Helena see that? Or mayhap it was safer to ignore that very detail. “She was kind and beautiful.” Had she been Aphrodite herself, the woman could not have eclipsed her daughter in every meaning of the word.

Helena went silent.

Did she not realize she needed to speak of those days after as much as he needed to hear of them? “What happened?” he asked, even as distant fear kicked up inside at the answers she would give.

For a long while she said nothing, and he thought she would skillfully shift them to a safer-for-her topic.