Robert’s body immediately hardened with her barely there utterance, conjuring all manner of wicked deeds he’d delight in teaching the lady.
Her breathy utterance raised remembrances of the feel of her body flush to his, the crimson hew of her nipples. The breathy moans of her desire.
A groan escaped him.
“Are you all right?” She creased her brow.
No. “Yes,” he managed, his voice garbled. “Surely the duke has hired private dance masters.”
“Three.”
He cocked his head.
She held up three fingers. “He’s hired three of them. In a month’s time. They’ve proven remarkably . . . unhelpful.”
In an attempt to not smile, Robert schooled his features. “And you expect I should have the skill to . . .” He lowered his head closer to her ear. “Teach you?”
Helena snorted. “No. I do think given the need to put your hands on my body in a specific way that I’d be better served by your instruction.”
Robert tamped down a groan as the sound of her hushed contralto unwittingly drew forth wicked images of her on her back, arms extended up toward him, while he worshiped her generous mouth. He shook his head. What a sin that he’d not recalled that night with her in the Hell and Sin Club. With fate mocking him all the more for that failing, the lady folded her arms before her, plumping her small breasts, and bringing his gaze to her modest décolletage as another hot wave of desire filled him. Had he truly found her . . . less than pretty? How, when she was . . . ? He gave his head another hard shake.
The lady made an impatient sound, and tapped her slipper on the marble floor, that gesture faintly muted by the strands of the orchestra. “You won’t, then?”
What in blazes was she running on about? Given the hard look she leveled on him, she expected some response.
“Teach me?” she said slowly, as though instructing a slow-to-comprehend child.
How had the tables been so flipped that she should be perfectly composed while he lusted over her less-than-abundant décolletage? “You wish me to provide dance lessons?” he asked gruffly.
The lady was safer with a knife in her hands than she was with seductive words on her lips. Understanding lit her eyes. “Ah, I see.” Apparently she’d little need for his involvement in the discussion.
“Just what do you see, Miss Banbury?” he said, his voice garbled. The roguish part of him longed to know precisely what wicked suggestions would tumble forth from her lips.
“Is it that you have a problem being alone with me?” Given their first two encounters, when she’d first tried to gut him, and then unman him with her foot, followed by their third encounter, where she’d called into question his honor, he really should have all number of reservations in being alone with this woman from the Hell and Sin Club.
“I assure you, I’ve no worry over being alone with you.” He infused as much sardonicism into that handful of words as he was able.
Her eyebrows dipped, as she took a pugnacious step closer. “Then I expect a rogue such as you can bring himself around to touch me enough for your sufficient lesson.” She wrinkled her nose. “Particularly as you were able to bring yourself to do so in my chambers. Then there was the fact that you were foxed, so perhaps it was that, hmm?”
Understanding dawned.
The lady believed he didn’t wish to dance with her. He ran his gaze over her sharp features, and the mark upon her cheek. The world was on the whole a merciless place. What was that world to a woman who wore scars upon her skin, and called a gaming hell home? “You misunderstand, Helena.”
He may as well have presented her an unsolvable word riddle for the befuddlement in her expression. “I do?”
Something tugged at his heart, an organ he’d long believed incapable of feeling anything for anyone beyond his family. “Quite the opposite, love,” he murmured. “I am looking forward to the opportunity to properly . . . touch you.”
As her eyes formed round moons, and her breath hitched noisily, another surge of masculine triumph gripped him. For her flippant words, desire fairly seeped from her tall, lithe frame. Then all hint of passion receded. She squinted up at him. “Are you making light of me?” she demanded.
“I’ve well learned the perils in crossing you, madam,” he assured her with a dry twist of his lips. Some of the tautness left her narrow shoulders and as she held his gaze, something passed between them. Something indefinable. Some peculiar connection that came in mention of that first exchange that had temporarily changed the course of her life.
God help him, with a sea of the ton’s leading lords and ladies, he was going to kiss her. In a rash moment of madness, he didn’t give a bloody hell who saw it . . .
“Robert, there you are!”
Robert silently cursed as fate tested the veracity of that previous silent thought. He spun toward that excited voice belonging to his sister. He quickly positioned himself between Beatrice and Helena.
Tamping down frustration at having his interlude with Miss Helena Banbury interrupted, Robert greeted his ever-smiling sister. “Beatrice.”
She took his hands, and leaning up on tiptoe kissed his cheek. “Since you’ve left for your bachelor residence, I’ve not had an opportunity to speak to you.” There was a faintly accusatory edge there that fanned his guilt.
“I’ve been otherwise . . . occupied,” he said, mindful of the woman at his back. Helena’s gaze bore into him.
His sister snorted. “Occupied.”
Yes, given the dissolute lifestyle he’d led, why should his sister believe he’d in fact committed himself to daily meetings with their father’s man-of-affairs? Regardless, he’d not have the discussion in front of Helena. He yanked one of her blonde curls. “What do you require, scamp?”
She grinned. “I wish to visit a bookshop on St Giles Cir . . .” Her words trailed off, as past his shoulder, her gaze bumped into Helena. Interest filled her expressive eyes. “Oh, hello.”
Robert quickly shifted so he no longer obstructed the crowd, or his sister’s view of the young woman.
“Hello,” Helena murmured, and dropped a hasty, if less than pretty, curtsy.
He opened his mouth to make the proper introductions, but Beatrice reached past him. “Forgive me, I did not see you there. I am Lady Beatrice Dennington.” She gestured to him. “Robert’s sister.”
Helena hesitated, and then placed her gloved fingers in his sister’s, returning that slight shake. “Helena Banbury. The . . .” Color suffused her cheeks. “Duke of Wilkinson’s daughter.”
A gasp exploded from his sister’s lips and she swung her gaze from Helena up to Robert. Understanding filled her eyes. “You are the duke’s daughter.”
Helena stiffened. “I am.”
He’d known Helena Banbury for only a handful of exchanges but had come to appreciate the way in which she brought her shoulders back, and tipped her chin up with those expressions of pride and defensiveness. What whispers she must have endured in her short time here to account for the reservation there, and how he despised every bloody bastard to put that guarded look in her eyes. She made to draw back her fingers, but his sister retained her hold.
A small, clear laugh escaped Beatrice. “Oh, I am so very glad.”
Helena furrowed her brow and looked blankly at Robert.
He gave his head a shake. It was hardly the place to explain that his sister had drawn the erroneous assumption that he’d launched an official courtship of the duke’s barely out of the schoolroom daughter. Even with Helena’s elevated status as a duke’s daughter, Beatrice would never disdain a person because of their station.
“May I pay you a visit, Miss Banbury?”
Helena tilted her head at an endearing angle. “Visit?” she parroted back.
His sister’s smile dipped. “Unless, you’d rather I did not?”
Wary caution blared in her eyes. “N-no,” she stammered. How much unkindness had she known that she’d built up these guarded walls about h
erself? “I would . . .” A hesitant smile quivered on her lips. “Like that very much.” And more, why should it matter to him? He was aiding her for the remainder of the Season out of a sense of honor to make right a wrong he’d done. Robert fisted his hands. So why this need to know the stories and secrets that had turned her into this guarded creature?
Beatrice clapped her hands. “Splendid. I shall call tomorrow afternoon.”
That snapped him back from his tumultuous musings. “No,” he exclaimed, earning the attention of both young women. “Miss Banbury was explaining that she has lessons with a very skilled dance master on the morrow.”
A charged look passed between Helena and Robert, and by the rapid rise and fall of her chest, she too was now thinking of all talk of his hands on her and the lesson she expected.
“Oh, drat,” his sister said and patted Helena on the hand regretfully. “They are rather tedious, are they not? Another time, then?”
Helena nodded. “That would be lovely, my lady.” She glanced across the ballroom, and then smoothed her palms down the front of her skirts. “I see the duchess motioning to me. If you’ll excuse me?” She stole another glance at Robert.
He swiftly captured her fingers and raised them to his mouth, damning the fabric between them that denied him the feel of her skin against his. “Miss Banbury,” he said quietly, in even, modulated tones.
“L-Lord Westfield.”
And as Helena turned on her heel and marched away, and his sister prattled on, he conceded that, for the first time in the course of his life, he was rather looking forward to a dance lesson.
Chapter 13
Rule 13
No friends.
Perched in her familiar spot in the window seat, Helena and Diana sat in a companionable silence.
While Helena read, the duke’s daughter, proper in all ways, bent her head over her embroidery, attending that task the way a military general attended his battle plans.
The young woman’s faint humming filled the otherwise quiet of the room. Using her sister’s distraction, Helena contemplated Lord and Lady Drake’s ball. More specifically, she thought to the tender exchange she’d witnessed between Robert and his sister. Lady Beatrice was just one young woman, amongst a sea of so many . . . and yet, early on Helena had come to appreciate all a person could learn from the number one. Beatrice was a single person, a loving sister to Robert, who believed the sun set and rose for him. And that spoke volumes more than the years’ worth of preconceived notions Helena had carried about members of the peerage.
Not everyone was as she seemed. Wasn’t Helena herself—and her brothers—proof of that?
She returned her study to Diana. And here was another young woman who threw into question everything Helena had long ago accepted as empirical fact.
When she had entered this household, she’d been determined to hate anything and everything here, for they were extensions of the man who’d abandoned Helena and her mother, whose defection had seen them in the clutches of a man who would make Satan cower in dread.
With the emerald pendant she always wore and her expensive white satin gowns, Diana represented all Helena had hated through the years. As a child begging and thieving in the streets, she’d seen the Lady Dianas of the world, flawless and perfect, and oblivious . . . with nothing but a look of disdain for the Helena Banburys and developed an easy loathing for all of them.
Or she thought she had.
Every day spent in this rapidly confusing Society, everything she’d believed to be fact proved just as murky and muddled as those early days when her mother had taken up with Mac Diggory.
Helena looked to where the young girl sat, drawing her needle through the fabric stretched out in the embroidery frame. Yes, she wanted to hate her.
Except Diana, with her innocent smile and even more innocent acceptance of Helena, had made it impossible to hate her. There was a greater likelihood of hating spun sugar and rainbows than this girl.
She was the sunny, joyful woman who gentlemen wed. Men like Robert. Men who had titles and wealth and who kept mistresses on the side, and visited scandalous gaming hells.
The duchess’s seething pronouncement from days earlier slipped into her thoughts. These two powerful ducal families who’d been so closely connected, and the expectation of at least the duchess that her daughter would one day wed Robert.
At the time, she’d not truly given the thought consideration. That when she left, Robert would find his proper, perfect bride, and why should that bride not be Diana? They would be the model of a flawless, golden English couple matched in their lineal connections and wealth. Unlike Helena, who would always be, no matter the Duke of Wilkinson’s futile efforts, the daughter of a whore who’d spent more years on the streets than in the comfort the duke had afforded his mistress.
The book trembled in Helena’s hands, bringing her attention to the jagged, scarred flesh.
She stared blankly down at those marks.
Badges of honor, Ryker had called them.
Helena smiled sadly. What rot. What utter and absolute rubbish. They were hideous. They were the hands of a common street urchin and not the manner of smooth, soft hands that managed ladylike skills such as embroidering.
A maid appeared at the entrance of the room. She dropped a curtsy. “My lady, your mother has asked you join her in the foyer.”
Diana paused midhum, and looked up from her work. “Oh, splendid. I’ll be but a moment,” she said, and the young maid rushed off. And the peculiarity of it all was that given those happy tones, the girl rather meant that. She caught Helena staring, and smiled. “Mother and I are to visit the modiste,” she said happily. Happy. She was always happy. Even at the prospect of an outing alone with her shrewish, always scolding mother. “I am to be fitted for a new bonnet,” Diana said, with an ever-widening smile. It was the duke’s smile, just another gift he’d passed down to one of his offspring. “You will come, yes?”
Retaining the book in her hands, Helena swung her legs over the side of her seat, and her skirts settled noisily at her ankles. “No.” She gentled that rejection, by lifting up her book. “I am,” waiting for a scandalous dance lesson. Or she had been. “I am going to remain behind and read.”
Diana made to rise, but Helena placed a staying hand on her knee. “Before you go, I would speak to you on . . . something,” she began slowly. A tight ball of dread curled in her belly.
Diana stared patiently back. “Yes?”
Searching her mind, Helena slid into the chair closest to the duke’s true daughter. She set Argand’s work on complex numbers down on the rose-inlaid side table. How she wished for the skilled ability to converse with anyone, about anything. Including this matter. She’d not known this particular issue could be a problem until the duchess’s furious words, yesterday afternoon. “The Marquess of Westfield,” she began.
And then she had nothing. Secretly she prayed the other young woman was capable enough with discourse to handle this entire discussion for the both of them. For what if Diana expressed that her heart was in some way engaged? A deep, dark, ugly sentiment that felt very much like jealousy slithered and twisted around inside.
Diana continued to blink like a confused pup. “What of him?”
“Your families are . . . quite close,” she settled for, recalling the easy familiarity between the Duke of Wilkinson and Robert in the midst of the Lord and Lady Drake’s ball.
“Our families.”
Helena looked blankly at her.
“Well, it is just, you said ‘your’ families, and this is your family too, Helena. So ‘our’ families.”
At that beautiful gesture, tears misted her vision. She blinked them back. Why could all these people not be the same nasty beasts as the Duchess of Wilkinson?
“You were asking?” Diana steered her back to the reason of her questioning.
“Uh, yes.” She drew in a steadying breath, and then spoke on a rush. “Are there feelings on your part?”
Diana lowered her embroidery frame. “Feelings for . . . ?” Then she rounded her eyes. “Do you mean the marquess?” A little giggle escaped her. “Oh, Helena, surely you jest. Lord Westfield is old.” Then with a surprising maturity, all hint of her amusement died, and she scooted closer to Helena. “Is this about your feelings for the marquess?”
Helena sat immobile. Feelings for the marquess? She did not have feelings for him . . . beyond annoyance and frustration. He vexed her. He teased her. How could she possibly come to care for a man who’d so shattered her existence by inadvertently thrusting her into the glittering world of polite Society?
He’s also helping you to put it to rights . . . Helping her when he really had no need to.
“I overheard Father discussing it with Mother,” Diana was saying. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Papa is quite elated at the prospect of your uniting the two lines. He’s long been friends with the Duke of Somerset. Papa sees him as a brother.” Diana dropped her chin atop her hand. “Not that I knew anything of that level of friendship.” She brightened. “Until you.”
At that inherent goodness, Helena felt . . . shame. She’d been steadfast in her love and loyalty to Ryker, Calum, Adair, and Niall . . . and yet, having been taken into the fold of this new family, she’d not had that same level of devotion to this earnest, young woman. “If there are feelings on your part,” Helena said hesitantly. “I will . . .” free Robert of his pledge to help. Something sharp and painful twisted at her heart.
The clear bell-like tinkling of Diana’s laughter filtered between them. “Do not be silly. Lord Westfield is nice enough, but he is also old enough to be my father.” Helena released an audible breath she’d not realized she was holding.
Perfectly unaware, Diana hopped to her feet. “I mustn’t keep Mother waiting.” She gave Helena another hopeful look. “You’re certain you do not wish to join us?”
Helena smiled. Her first true smile that day. In many days, she thought. In fact, when had she found joy in anything beyond her bookkeeping at the clubs? How peculiar to realize happiness existed—outside the club, even. “I am certain,” she said, and returned Diana’s wave.
The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides Book 1) Page 16