The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(85)

Nervousness churned in her belly.

“Do you know what else sisters do?” Diana asked. She leaned close and whispered against her ear. “They also accompany one another into dangerous parts of London so they are not alone.”

Helena jerked her attention back. A mischievous sparkle lit Diana’s pretty eyes.

She was already shaking her head. “No.” Absolutely not.

The young woman surged forward. “Please, let me go with you.” The faint entreaty in that handful of words tugged at Helena.

The underscoring of desperation in Diana’s words spoke to a woman who chafed at the constraints where her capabilities were questioned, and she was expected to do whatever others thought was in her best interest, without allowing her the freedom of choice. Helena had battled a lifetime of frustration over it. She tamped down that weakening. “It is too dangerous,” she repeated. Dangers that extended beyond the mortal kind and into the realm of her sister’s reputation as a lady.

“Surely you do not think I’d allow you to go alone?” Diana pursed her lips.

Actually she did. Ladies didn’t risk their reputations by entering the seedy parts of St Giles. “I’ve already said, it’s not a place for you to be,” Helena said, earning a frown. She’d grown up in those alleys and had knifed grown men who’d dared to harm her. She’d not expose Diana to even the hint of danger.

Her sister surged to her feet, and planted her arms akimbo. “If it is too dangerous then, you are not going either.”

“I grew up there,” she pointed out. As such, she was long past ruin or fear where those streets were concerned. “I’d not risk your reputation or your life.” She loved her, this woman she’d been so determined to hate when she’d arrived.

“You think to protect me,” she shot back with far more mature knowing than Helena had credited. “As you’ve been protected in being forced here?” A new, determined glint flecked her usually soft eyes. “He is my brother too, and I’ve not even met him.”

Helena creased her brow. How had she failed to consider that familial bond shared by Ryker and Diana, one that would mean nothing to the man who despised all connections with their father? That truth alone would rock the trusting young lady. “You can’t,” she said at last. There were too many dangers and uncertainties.

“Very well.” The young lady firmed her lips, the words ratcheting up Helena’s apprehension. “Then I will make the journey myself.”

She frowned. The determined set to the girl’s narrow shoulders hinted at her resolve. If she didn’t bring her along, Helena had no doubt her sister, in a bid to stretch her wings, would eventually find a way. She cursed. “You must change your gown. No finery and wear the plainest cloak you own. And you will stay close by me at all times,” she ordered the beaming young woman. With each utterance, the folly in bringing this woman into the club sent warning bells blaring all the louder.

Diana nodded excitedly. “Then we must hurry,” she said, and grabbing Helena by the hand, she tugged her along. “We have your meeting, and then the marquess comes to speak with Father, and I expect he’ll expect to see you after that meeting.”

Except, as she hurried abovestairs, she could not fight back her unease in leading the duke’s legitimate daughter from the safety of her townhouse into a den of sin.



With an eerie similarity to his movements twelve years earlier, Robert climbed the steps of the Duke of Somerset’s townhouse and rapped on the front door.

His father’s loyal butler drew the door open almost instantly. “My father?” He turned over his hat and cloak.

There was no nervous swallowing or pale skin. There was no stammering or hastily averted eyes. “He is in his office, my lord,” the servant said with a slight smile.

Yes, because, where the late duke’s servants had been stone-faced and sacked for expressions of mirth, the new duke surrounded himself with a staff unafraid to show emotion.

“I will show myself in,” he said, and he started down the familiar path, through the long-hated corridors. New carpets had since been laid, and the paint changed, but the same ancestral portraits hung along the corridors.

For years he’d kept his gaze trained forward on this walk, avoiding looking around at the home that contained so much evil and sin, and dark memories that had forever shaped him. Now as he walked, all that agony of betrayal was . . . gone. The bitter resentment that had shaped him into the careless, heartless rogue he’d been had lifted, driven back by a spirited minx who’d boldly challenged him at every turn.

Robert drew to a stop beside a familiar ducal portrait. His late grandfather’s hateful visage stared back, commanding even in death. The hard set to his mouth, the coldness in his eyes, all expertly captured by the artist. Not a hint of frailty existed in the austere lines of those ducal features. He moved closer, peering into those eyes. He’d hated him when he’d been living, and hated him with an equal ferocity in death.

. . . you may have your tantrum and hate me for now, but someday you will thank me for this . . .

Robert would have wagered his very life that he’d never thank the bastard for his intervention. Shattered by Lucy’s treachery and the late Duke of Somerset’s machinations, Robert had been transformed into a coolly removed man who’d hardened his heart. Then Helena had stepped into his life and singlehandedly torn down every defensive wall he’d constructed, proving that his heart was still very much alive—and that it beat for her.