She snorted.
He bristled. “I don’t.”
“No matter,” she said with a flick of her luxuriant tresses. She pointed behind her once more. “You need to walk down the corridor, past the long-case clock . . .” Her words droned on and on. The husky, almost musical quality to her contralto lulled him to distraction . . .
The earth swayed under his feet yet again and he tumbled into an ignoble heap at the feet of his dagger-wielding, blood-thirsty hellion.
She cursed roundly, the words vulgar enough to make a guard at Newgate’s cheeks burn.
How very refreshing that with all the practiced words and false smiles around him, her response should be so honest. He grinned.
The woman planted her arms akimbo. “Do you find this amusing?”
“Er . . .” Her glare killed the admission on his lips. Either way, he would have chosen entertaining and diverting, and yes, he supposed amusing. Given the turn of events, he did find this whole exchange amusing. Listening to a tart-mouthed, fiery-eyed stranger and her inventive curses was vastly preferable to the thoughts that had driven him to the club.
She nudged him with the tip of her foot and as he tipped his head sideways, his gaze caught on dainty toes. Odd, he’d never before appreciated just how enticing a pair of feet happened to be. He fixed his tired stare on her right foot and the slightly crooked littlest toe. How very endearing . . . that slight imperfection on an otherwise perfect foot.
His eyes grew heavy, even as her melodic words washed over him, lulling him to sleep.
Chapter 4
Rule 4
Never approach a drunken man.
With the exception of her brother, Ryker, his partners, and Clara, the woman responsible for the prostitutes, no one entered the main living quarters of the hall.
Many, nay, nearly all women would have dissolved into a fit of tears or given over to the vapors at coming upon a strange gentleman in her home, but it would take more than a drunken gentleman to rouse fear in Helena Banbury’s breast.
Standing in the main corridor of the Hell and Sin Club’s owner suite, with a too-tall, well-muscled stranger, Ryker’s fourth rule blared around her brain.
Never approach a drunken man.
How many times had those words been impressed into her? If her brother knew she’d been so foolhardy as to investigate the commotion instead of turning the lock and ringing for a servant, he’d build a keep and lock her away in it as he always threatened to do when she was a girl.
Except, Ryker really should have amended the rule to include, “Never approach a well-muscled gentleman more than half a foot taller than oneself.” It put one at an extreme disadvantage.
A bleating snore escaped the same gentleman she’d been studying earlier on the gaming floor. Now thoroughly foxed and graceless, he bore no hint of the commanding, slightly sad figure seated alone at his table. She leaned over, her knife extended out toward him, and then waved the blade in front of his harshly beautiful face. Why . . . why . . . he’d gone and fallen asleep! Here. With the tip of her foot, Helena nudged him in the leg. She frowned when her ineffectual efforts were met with another broken snore. Some of the anxiety slid from her taut frame, as the earlier threat of a drunk, unpredictable stranger lifted. Helena fisted her blade, her gaze inextricably drawn to him. Over the years she’d made it a point to never look at noblemen visiting the clubs, either from her window or the floors when she was permitted to walk about during the day. Those men were treacherous fiends with but one thing on their minds where a woman of her station was concerned.
In the countless rules Ryker had heaped upon her shoulders, most had pertained to the unreliability and depravity of noblemen who believed women existed as nothing more than as diversions from their staid, proper lives. Avoid their attention at all costs. The lesson she’d learned at her brokenhearted mother’s side had been lesson enough.
Or apparently not, given her unwitting fascination with this particular stranger. It was just . . . She chewed the inside of her cheek.
She stole a nervous glance about. There was no harm in simply looking at the lofty lord. Especially if that same lofty lord in his passed-out, inebriated state remained wholly unaware. She took a step closer to study him.
This stranger, however, in his immaculate black coat and crisp white cravat had the mesmerizing look of no other man she’d ever before seen. Granted, her exposure to the world was rather limited, but this inexplicable pull held her enthralled. Perhaps it was the halo of unfashionably long, golden strands or the firm, unyielding jaw gentled just the slightest bit by a faint cleft at the center of his chin.
Blade held protectively close, Helena carefully lowered herself to the floor, and continued her examination. With his blond, golden lashes and the sculpted quality of his sharp features, he was far more beautiful than any man had a right to be.
She swallowed hard, and stole another look about. If she were discovered, her brothers would commit her to Bedlam for her folly in remaining at a drunken nobleman’s side. Except she was riveted, transfixed by the glorious golden perfection of him. Her heart hammering wildly, she returned her attention to the stranger and gasped as his eyes flew open, and he smiled.
Butterflies danced riotously inside her stomach. Where was the proper fear and wariness? She’d long prided herself on being logical and practical in all matters.
For . . . with the previous distance between them in the darkened room, their color had eluded her. Endless blue. The color she imagined a countryside summer sky to be. Not that she’d ever been outside the dark, grimy streets of London. Nor likely would ever be, to verify such ponderings. But in her mind, she imagined the country to be different . . . and have the look of . . . this stranger’s eyes.
Even drunk, there was an intelligence in his gaze, an intensity, as though he could see every foolish yearning she’d hidden from even herself.
Eyes that also suggested he knew he’d been the object of her scrutiny. A devilish half grin tugged at his lips, jerking her back from the momentary insanity that had clouded her senses.
Her skin awash with humiliated heat, Helena hopped to her feet. “You need to leave.” She jabbed her finger toward the long-case clock. “Now.” Squaring her shoulders, she stood with her feet spread, hands on her hips, until the intruder stood up and stumbled down the opposite direction. He turned the corner, and some of the tension left her. From down the length of the hall, a loud thump, followed by some inventive curses, reached her ears. Then silence, as he took his leave altogether.
She gave her head a disgusted shake, starting for her rooms once more. These were sad days indeed, when an exchange with a drunken stranger should highlight her otherwise tedious existence here.
She reached her chambers and pressed the handle.
Tension twisting inside, Helena began to pace. The audacity of him. To enter the private suites and collapse into his drunken stupor no less. She tapped the hilt of her knife against her palm. It would have served the scoundrel right if she’d summoned one of the men and had him physically removed.
So why didn’t you?
The strategically stationed guards alternated shifts throughout the day but someone was assigned to those positions at all times. Only her own earlier foray onto the gaming floor, the crowded tables and crush of patrons, merited one of the guards stepping away from his post.
Ryker would have bloodied senseless the employee who’d abandoned his post, and then tossed the careless man into the street for his failings. Having lived with the uncertainty of nothing but fear and hunger for company, she’d not risk another’s security in that way . . . even if he’d demonstrated an egregious lack of judgment.
But that is not the only reason, a voice needled at the back of her head. For if she were being honest, with at least herself . . . her reasons for not summoning Ryker moved beyond a noble reason to protect a guard from a beating and firing.
Had she raised an alarm, her brother’s men would have broken mor
e than the stranger’s nose for having even walked the same halls as Helena’s chambers—and such an elegant, aquiline nose deserved far more than that ignoble fate.
Filled with restive energy, she strode over to the rose-inlaid secretaire stacked with ledgers. Since her brother had hired her the best tutors, and she’d discovered a calming peace in the constancy of those numbers, they alone made sense. They could be understood and explained. And more . . . they posed a distraction from the hellish memories that could only come from living on the streets, at the mercy of a ruthless gang. Helena tossed her knife atop the leather book containing last year’s numbers for the club and pressed her fingertips against her temples. In this instance, her mind was too muddled to work through the numbers Ryker expected of her tomorrow.
Restless, she peeled back the edge of the thick, sapphire-blue curtain and gazed down into the dangerous streets of St Giles. Even with the distance between her and the ground, the clatter of carriage wheels passing and raucous shouts from the streets carried up to her lone room. She rested her brow against the window and studied two dandies who stumbled out of the club and spilled into the streets, a bright splash of garish color in a dark night. How very small her world was. Envy twisted inside at the power granted and permitted men and gentlemen alike. In the company of a drunken stranger, all her deepest, long-buried yearnings to know a world beyond these walls reared once more. Oh, she didn’t desire the company of a drunkard. She’d dealt with enough beatings and lashings at the hands of one of those unpredictable bastards: the man her mother had married after her protector had turned her out.
But did she truly wish to remain an accountant and nothing more? A woman not many years off from her thirtieth year, she’d never left London or interacted with anyone beyond a handful of de facto family inside the Hell and Sin. Was it a wonder she was more comfortable with numbers than people?
With a sigh she let the curtain go and rescued the ledger at the top of the pile, along with one of the many pairs of spectacles that littered the club. She studied her glasses, fiddling with the wire frames. She’d been so content with managing the books that she’d not given true thought to what she wanted her future to be. With the increasing limits placed on her movements inside and outside the club, she’d begun to chafe at those boundaries imposed. For the vital role she contributed to the success of the club, she was still largely . . . powerless. With that absolute lack of control, she’d come to appreciate everything she did hunger for: the ability to go where she wished, the freedom to speak to whomever she wanted, and the right to play a public role in the running of the club, not play in the carefully guarded secret it had been.
Shoving aside the brewing frustration, Helena put her spectacles on, collected the ledger, and made her way across the room. There was no room or place for woolgathering at the Hell and Sin, and most especially not when her reports were still unfinished.
Helena climbed into the massive four-poster bed and in the dim light cast by the fire in the hearth, reviewed the previous year’s liquor expenses. The faint ticking of the porcelain clock at the side of her bed marked the passing moments in a grating, staccato rhythm, cutting across her efforts.
Unbidden, her gaze drifted from the page over to the door, as the stranger’s visage wandered through her thoughts once more. Who was he, the late-night wanderer with his sad eyes who’d buried that misery in drink?
For the course of her life, with her brother’s tutelage, she’d been trained to see noblemen as emotionless, unfeeling bastards. It had been a lesson already learned through her own experience on the streets as a child, begging for a coin at the hands of those lords and ladies, only to be invisible in her struggles.
Yet, the depth of emotion she’d spied in the blond stranger’s agonized gaze contradicted those long-held truths. What pain should he know that he’d imbibe to the point of falling all over himself in such a disreputable gaming hell? Oh, yes, her brother said all men imbibed, but when she’d spied him in the club, there had been a wealth of emotion in his eyes. An intelligence and somberness absent in most of the men she observed from her lonely window abovestairs.
All that emotion had been lost to the effects of alcohol, but so remained the questions about what had driven him to lose himself in that bottle. “Enough,” she muttered, and abandoning all hope of work, she slammed the ledger shut with a comforting thump. She tossed it onto her nightstand.
It spoke volumes to her predictable existence that she should allow one chance meeting with a drunken stranger to shape her thoughts and wonderings. She yanked off her spectacles, and dropped them atop the leather book.
Helena burrowed into the downy-soft feather mattress . . . and stared unblinking at the ceiling above. She frowned, and wiggled in her spot. Too many nights she’d lain awake, dreading the nightmares that came when she drifted off to sleep. With an aggravated sigh, she flipped onto her side . . . and looked at the opposite wall. Tonight’s restlessness had nothing to do with the demons that lurked from her past.
Rather, the wicked grin of a powerfully built gentleman haunted her waking thoughts.
Firm lips found the sensitive spot along her neck, where her pulse fluttered. With a shameful moan, Helena turned into that sweet caress. In response, the stranger ran a large, strong hand over her back, lower, ever lower. He tugged at the hem of her nightgown. His fingers danced along her skin, and she arched, a breathless cry escaping her. His lips moved from the sweet spot he loved on her neck and she moaned in protest, but he merely shifted his attention to the peak of one breast. Her hips shot off the bed as she begged for more. Not knowing in her innocence what more was, but knowing he would show her.
And he did.
Another groan escaped her as he shoved her modest nightshift higher still. He searched his palms over the curve of her hips, and pulled her buttocks close against the vee of his hard thighs.
Heat, the kind rained down by a stream of sunlight, bathed Helena from within. The sensation filled every corner of her once-chilled body—
Helena jerked upright. Her chest moved quickly from the force of her dream. Not the nightmares which so often plagued her but rather a dream which a virgin, still at four and twenty, had no business having. With the clock ticktocking a grating staccato beat in the silence, Helena pressed her palms to her flaming cheeks, and concentrated on drawing in slow, even breaths. It was all manner of things improper and scandalous, and yet . . . Helena closed her eyes and fought to draw forth the memory of the faceless stranger who’d come to her. His unidentifiable features shifted in and out of focus, until he was transformed into a bold, midnight visitor with the face and physique of a Greek god carved in stone, so vastly preferable to the horrors that often dogged her sleep.
“Enough,” she mumbled. There was business to attend. There was always business to attend. She glanced to the slight crack in the brocade curtains and choked. Sunlight filtered through that narrow opening. Daylight? Surely not. She shot her gaze to the clock. Ten minutes past nine? A groan spilled from her lips and she covered her face with her hands.
Making it a point to rise just before the sun peeked over the horizon, she never slept in. Laziness and sloth were unpardonable sins in the Hell and Sin Club, and she held herself to the same high standard Ryker expected of all his employees. She’d worked to build her position as one to command respect for what she did for the club and not her relationship to the owner of it.
Helena flopped back, her head colliding with the soft, still-warm pillow, and closing her eyes she ran anxiously through her daily tasks. The books needed tending. She still had to prepare the liquor reports for Ryker, and with the mess they were in, and her lolling about in bed, she’d be behind in her work. She was never, ever late in completing a—
A loud snore penetrated the quiet and she froze.
Tick-tock-tick-tock.
Helena whipped her head to the right, and her gaze landed on the same golden stranger who’d slipped into her dreams. All air left her on a sw
ift exhale, as the wicked memories of her dream came rushing forward.
It had been a dream. Mayhap it still was a dream.
She quickly yanked her attention upwards, concentrating on the faint crack in the plaster, on the tick of the clock, on anything other than the panic roiling in her breast.
Angling her head ever so slightly, she stole a sideways peek. Oh, bloody hell!
The aquiline nose and high, proud cheekbones lent the midnight wanderer an aura of strength and confidence, even in sleep. Her breath came in quick, panicked spurts and she promptly pressed her eyes closed. Unleashing a silent stream of vicious curses, she forced herself to look at the man lying beside her. In her bed. Her redundant, panicked thoughts rolled over each other and she attempted to slow them as they rapidly careened out of control. Her lips still burned from the memory of . . .
She pressed her fingers to her swollen mouth, tamping down a groan. He’d kissed her. Helena slapped her palms over her face. How had she failed to lock her door? That rule had been the simplest of all the bloody rules laid out by Ryker. Pressure built behind her eyes as she tried to dredge up details of what had transpired after she’d finally managed to find sleep. She’d been so distracted by her encounter with the tall, golden-haired devil in the corridor, she’d not taken all of the one second it would have required to lock the door. She rubbed the points at her temples in a vain attempt to wake from this horrific nightmare. To no avail. Sickening waves of nausea slammed into her as she tried to sort out that which had been a dream and what was, in fact, her reality.
And if he’d kissed her . . . Her jumbled thoughts skidded to a stop, and then picked up at a frantic pace. Oh, God. Her body still burned with the memory of the handsome stranger’s touch. What if she’d wantonly turned over her virginity to the golden-haired lord? What if in her slumber, somewhere between dream and fantasy, she’d made love with him?
The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides Book 1) Page 6