The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(8)

He shot a questioning look over his shoulder.

“Behave.”

He winked. “I always do.”

His sister rolled her eyes skyward, and with a half grin, he started for his horse.





Chapter 2


Rule 2


Never visit the gaming hell during the midnight hours.

Since Helena Banbury had been a small girl, her “brothers” had teased that she was better at reading numbers than people.

Given her remarkable lack of exposure to people, she rather thought their words said in jest made a good deal of sense.

This particular moment was no exception to her rather predictable, if safe, days—and nights—inside the Hell and Sin Club.

Tucked away in the small office at the back of the Hell and with her spectacles perched on her nose, Helena ran her gaze over the neat columns of numbers. Bellowing shouts sounded outside the doorway, and she continued working through the brawl taking place beyond the heavy wood panel. There was something to be said for having a solid oak door between you and danger. Until her rescue years earlier by her brother, Ryker, she’d had nothing to protect her from the perils of the world. That was the precarious lot of a motherless and fatherless child on the streets of London.

Chewing at her lower lip, Helena swiftly tabulated the weekly liquor expenses.

Fifteen cases of whiskey.

Fifteen cases of sherry.

Twenty cases of brandy.

A bothersome strand of brown hair escaped her tight chignon and fell across her brow. Noblemen and their bloody drinks. Not pausing in her writing, she blew back the tress and marked a final note in the column. Working a quick gaze over the numbers she silently cursed. They required far more brandy. She stretched in her chair, rubbing her lower back. Her bloody obstinate brother insisted on only purchasing the finest French spirits, despite Helena’s insistence that any cheaper brandy would do just as well. The swiftly depleting stock of spirits that week was proof of that.

A wry grin pulled at her lips. Yes, her four brothers of the street. Though she only shared blood with one of them, the bond between them all was no less strong. What most failed to realize was that if you knew how to read them, numbers could tell you a good deal about people. And the glaring details in the neat rows of her ledger said all number of unfavorable things about noblemen: they drank too many spirits; they spent too many pounds indulging in their liquor. And they demonstrated a remarkable lack of self-control.

Granted, those failings of character had resulted in the triumph of the Hell and Sin Club. And having risen from the dust and ash of the streets to become leader of the glittering underbelly of St Giles, her brother, the majority owner of the club, expected nothing less than even greater wealth and power. There was, however, always room for greater success. Dipping her pen in the crystal inkwell, she proceeded to add the cost of those pricey bottles. Helena drummed the back of her pen on the smooth mahogany surface of her desk, all the while contemplating the columns.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and she jerked her head up just as the door opened. Raucous laughter from the floor of the Hell spilled into the room, only to be muffled moments later, as her brother Calum stepped inside.

The tall, bearish man, with a jagged scar at the corner of his mouth, who stood at the front of the room would have terrified most women. “Your brother wants the figures.”

Then, she wasn’t most women. The jagged scars crisscrossing her back were proof of that. “Which brother?” she said, infusing a bored note into her question.

Calum snorted. “You know.”

Yes, she did. The jest was that Ryker had his hands, and head, in nothing but the club . . . and if he had a heart, then that would be in it, too. Long ago, however, the head of the club had demonstrated his cold, calculated approach to everything . . . and everyone—including the siblings he’d grown up with on the street.

Helena returned her attention to her columns. “Tell him, I’m not done.” She directed that pronouncement at the page, as she considered the area to best reduce expenses.

“Not good enough,” Calum drawled, and she looked up, a gasp escaping her.

“Christ on Sunday.” The pen slipped from her fingers. “Must you sneak?” Several inches past six feet, and broad across the chest, a man of his sheer size had no right to be so stealthy. It had served them well when he’d been one of the most skilled pickpockets in all of London, but it proved a bother when one was trying to focus.

He rested his hip on the edge of the desk, and stared pointedly. “The numbers, Helena,” he said, fanning her exasperation.

For as fortunate as she was to not be any bastard-born child whoring in the streets, a deep-seated irritation simmered inside for the still-powerless role that came with being a woman in her twenty-fourth year with so little influence.

“Does he want them now?” she snapped, pulling her spectacles off and tossing them on the desk. “Or does he want them correct?”

Calum grinned. “He wants both.”

Pointing her eyes to the ceiling, Helena threw down her pen. “Very well.” She shoved back her chair.

Ignoring the way Calum shot his dark brown eyes to his hairline, she started for the door.

“Where in hell are you going?”

She froze midmovement, and wheeled back. “To see—”

“Ryker is on the floors,” he interrupted, all earlier hint of amusement gone, replaced with a dark scowl. And with reason. Even the prospect of Helena setting foot on the floors, or outside the club, at the height of the early-morn gaming hours, was an act that had been expressly forbidden. It had also seen one careless guard fired, when she’d wandered onto those floors ten years earlier.