The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides Book 1)

by Christi Caldwell

  His father gave him a sad look. “It is not my place to cast questions or suspicions on Wilkinson or Miss Banbury’s mother.” He leaned forward, holding his son’s gaze. “I expect the young lady has the answers you seek.”

  Helena’s visage flickered in his mind: her scarred cheek, her hands. All marks that spoke of a hellish existence.

  With a grimace, his father shifted.

  Robert frowned. “Father?”

  “I am fine,” the duke said gruffly. “We are not discussing me.” He leaned his weight back in his chair and it groaned in protest. “Why the questions about Miss Banbury?” Curiosity glinted in the older man’s eyes.

  The question gave him pause and in a bid for nonchalance, Robert lifted his shoulders in a faint shrug, carefully weighing his words. “I met the young woman at the Earl of Sinclair’s ball.” He settled for the vaguest, truest admission. After all, he could not readily come and ask questions, and not expect the same in return. Yet, with his delving, Robert had expanded beyond a faint curiosity over the woman whom he’d, in a moment of madness, agreed to assist.

  “Her mother was lovely,” the duke murmured. He captured his chin between his thumb and forefinger, and rubbed. “I believe her name was Dahlia or Delia. I expect her daughter is a like beauty.”

  Robert made a noncommittal sound. Since his first meeting with the young woman at the Hell and Sin Club, he’d not seen any stretch of beauty that fit within his and Society’s constraints. Taller than most men, and so slender it looked as though a strong wind might knock her over, she’d proven herself . . . interesting in other ways that defied expectations of beauty.

  “She is not lovely, then?” his father prodded. The creases on his forehead hinted at his befuddlement.

  “She is . . . interesting,” he settled for.

  “Yes, well there is something to be said for interesting, too.”

  The duke rightfully assumed Robert’s questions came from a gentleman who’d found himself captivated by a lady. Never would Robert make that same fatal mistake. Not again. His father could not know as much given his failure to know about the late duke’s actions in this very room. Neither refuting nor accepting his father’s supposition, Robert shifted in his chair. “You know nothing else about the lady?” he pressed. Surely a man who’d been friends with Wilkinson since their university days had some information about the lady beyond those small scraps?

  His father shrugged. “I do not.” A twinkle lit his eye. “I’m afraid you will have to find out the answers to your questions about the lady.”

  The duke no doubt believed he saw much with Robert’s questioning. What he could not know was the scheme Robert had agreed to help the lady with, all in the hopes of keeping at bay dishonorable suitors.

  . . . I’d sooner dig Boney’s dead body from the grave and drag him down the aisle than tie myself to one such as you . . .

  He chuckled. It would seem there existed one lady in the whole of the kingdom, wholly uninterested in him and the title attached to his name.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, and then the door opened. Beatrice stood at the front. “Robert,” she said with a surprise to rival their father’s earlier reaction. At the faintly accusatory glimmer in her eyes, a sliver of guilt stabbed at him.

  At three and twenty, she should have a husband and a passel of babes at her feet. The fact that she couldn’t find a single gentleman to properly court her spoke volumes of the lack of worthy nobles in the kingdom. “Bea,” he said, climbing to his feet.

  Beatrice pointed her eyes to the ceiling, and strolled forward. “Bah, do not waste your attempts at gentlemanly bows on me. You’ve not come round.” She fell into the seat next to him and motioned to the chair he’d just vacated. “Well?” she prodded.

  From the corner of his eye, he detected the smile on their father’s lips. “Well?” Robert repeated. With her worrying and questioning, she’d become more like a concerned mama than the younger sister who’d dogged his shadows when he’d been visiting from college.

  “Is this about your morning visit to a certain duke’s daughter?”

  Ah, so gossips had begun the furious whispers, and by his sister’s knowledge they’d already found their way here. Which would mean the papers, by tomorrow, would be well documenting his sudden fascination with the duke’s illegitimate daughter. “Paying attention to the gossips now, are you, Bea?” He made a tsking sound.

  “Do not try and change the subject,” she scolded. “She’s too young and innocent for you, Robert. Do you not agree, Papa?”

  Brother and sister looked to the surviving patriarch and he held his hands up. “It is not my place to interfere in matters of the heart.”

  With the exception of cleverly thrown-together summer parties. Robert smiled wryly and his father had the decency to flush.

  “I thank you for your concern, Bea,” Robert said, shoving to his feet. “I assure you I know what I am doing where the lady is concerned.” And as she opened her mouth to either protest or press him for further details, he dropped a bow.

  The meeting to obtain information about Helena Banbury had proven less successful than he’d hoped.

  Though, it hardly mattered. Given the fool plan he’d agreed to last evening, he would assuredly find out all there was to know of Helena Banbury.

  And somehow, as he took his leave of his father’s office, the ennui to dog him last evening, remarkably, was absent.

  Chapter 12

  Rule 12

  Never show weakness.

  Helena really should have stipulated that Lord Robert be in attendance at any of the balls she’d the ill fortune of having to accept an invitation to.

  That realization came entirely too late and she now found herself sandwiched between the Duke and Duchess of Wilkinson. She’d taken refuge between them after she’d noticed some such gentlemen eying her the same way a starving child coveted a slice of bread. She sank back in a bid to make herself as small as possible. A rather impossible feat for a woman nearly six feet in height.

  While the duke and duchess conversed, Helena searched her gaze quickly about Lord and Lady Drake’s ballroom, peering around the crush of guests for a certain gentleman, a gentleman who represented her only hope of escape from the grasping attentions of men determined to corner her, ruin her, and be off with her ten thousand pounds.

  Though, it wasn’t truly her ten thousand pounds. When she left in three months (two months, twenty-eight days if one wished to be truly precise), then those funds would remain in the duke’s care. Her gaze landed on the neck of a lady across the room. Draped about her neck were enough diamonds and sapphires to have fed Helena’s family for years. During those darkest days, as she’d come to think of them, when she’d suffered at Diggory’s hands, she would have easily sold her soul for a single pound, let alone a thousand of them. Now she’d gleefully burn the thousands of pounds settled on her . . .

  She curled her fingers into tight balls. She’d be damned if she accepted a single farthing from the Duke of Wilkinson. Since she’d been delivered to his Mayfair residence, he’d proven himself kind, ready with a smile. But those showings of kindness could never, would never, erase the hell she and her mother had endured.

  Helena drew in a slow, calming breath. Alas, she’d slipped the door open and Diggory had stepped inside.

  Not here. Not now. These were the moments of madness that saw women carted off to Bedlam. That truth increased the rapid-growing panic.

  Around the chambers of her mind echoed her screams and cries until the memories merged with the uproarious laughter of Lady Drake’s guests, forming a cacophony of distorted sound. Her chest moved fast, and she concentrated on the task of drawing in slow, even breaths. Do not look at the light. Do not look at the light . . . Except, like a child too innocent to know not to play with fire, she lifted her gaze to the crystal chandeliers aglow and her stomach lurched.

  Helena pressed her eyes tightly closed as the acrid burning of flesh filled her nostril
s. Her own flesh melting . . . dying . . . pain. So much of it . . .

  You are stronger than those memories . . . Fight those thoughts, Helena . . .

  “Helena?” The Duke of Wilkinson’s booming voice cut across her tortured memories, and sucked her back from the abyss.

  She blinked rapidly, dimly registering the benevolently smiling duke, his glowering duchess, and . . .

  Helena tipped her head, taking in the gentleman who’d, at some point, joined their trio.

  Robert. Here. Flawlessly attired in midnight breeches and jacket, the expert tie of his stark white cravat accentuated the olive hue of skin that hinted at old Roman roots. Her stomach sank. How long had he been standing here? Too many times when the nightmares took hold she became lost in them, and when she came to, time and details had all blurred together. The marquess stood, a model of cool elegance, appraising her through thick, blond lashes and she stood there—well, Helena.

  His lips turned up in a slow, knowing smile that sent heat coursing through her.

  At being caught gawking, she wanted the marble floor to open and absorb her. She was not a weak ninny who’d ooh and aah over a fancy lord. Isn’t that what you’ve done so many times with this man . . .

  She gritted her teeth at that taunting reminder rolling through her mind.

  Never more grateful for the duke’s garrulous self, Helena sank back a step. “Westfield, my dear boy,” the duke was saying. He thumped Robert hard on the back. “A pleasure, as always.”

  The duchess turned her lips in the semblance of a smile. “Do say you intend to come to my ball?” Another bloody ball. At the very least it was in the duke and duchess’s home and it would be vastly easier to escape the ballroom during the infernal affair.

  From over the couple’s heads, Robert locked his gaze on Helena. “I would not dream of missing it for the world,” he murmured, his blue eyes radiating a powerful heat and intensity that sent butterflies dancing within.

  His words and presence here now were merely a façade at her bequest. How very easy it was with Robert’s enigmatic pull to believe in a sliver of a moment that there was truth to his look.

  She studied him as the duke commanded his notice.

  “How is my friend, the old duke, doing, eh?” The older man chortled as though he’d delivered the cleverest of quips. “Always jested about that, you know.”

  Helena hovered, an outsider to their exchange. What was the jest between those old dukes? For that matter, were peers even capable of humor?

  From over the duke’s much shorter frame, Robert caught her eye. “Yes, he’s older by an entire day, isn’t he,” he said, explaining for Helena’s benefit.

  And a flicker of warmth fanned inside her at his concerted effort to include her.

  Unnerved by that gesture from a man she once believed incapable of anything but his own self-absorption, Helena looked away. For in two days, Robert Dennington, the Marquess of Westfield, had not only agreed to assist her in her efforts, but he’d also shown this additional thoughtfulness. That man did not fit with everything she’d witnessed and heard about members of the peerage, and she didn’t know what to do with this unsettling discovery.

  “Indeed, Your Grace. I trust your old injury is not paining you?”

  As the duke replied, Helena caught the inside of her cheek between her teeth. With that handful of sentences, and the ease of familiarity between these two men, she had a glimpse into a world she’d never before known existed. Members of the peerage were incapable of warmth and affection. They didn’t speak with any real sincerity, or make inquiries into past injuries. Yet, these two men—Robert and the man who’d sired her—in fact, did. And she didn’t know what to make of it. It unsettled the previously stable foundation upon which she’d built her well-ordered existence.

  While the two noblemen conversed, the duchess glared at Helena in a very unduchesslike display of volatile emotion. Fortunately, the duke said something requiring his wife’s attention. At being spared that woman’s open apathy, Helena relaxed her shoulders. She’d faced thieves in the Dials who inspired less evil than the duke’s wife. Not for the first time, the duke’s one-time affection for Helena’s effervescent mother made sense.

  Mayhap this was how the other half lived. With men marrying where they had to, but living a life of some happiness outside those respectable unions.

  “Miss Banbury?” The duchess’s sharp tone brought Helena’s head swiveling back to the group. Again, her skin tingled with the force of Robert’s gaze. “His Lordship is speaking to you,” the duchess said between tight lips.

  A surge of color rushed to her cheeks. “My lord,” she said quickly.

  He inclined his head, and took a step closer, effectively angling the duchess out of Helena’s line of vision. Were his movements a deliberate bid to divert that vitriol away from Helena’s notice? “May I?” he asked quietly, that grin the Devil would have traded him for on his lips.

  “May you what?” she blurted.

  Robert indicated the bloody card dangling from her wrist, and Helena followed his gaze. She snapped her other hand over the offensive piece.

  “Dance with you, Miss Banbury,” he said smoothly, and reached for her card.

  Helena gulped. “No.” That terse exclamation froze him midmovement. Head bent over her card, he lifted his gaze.

  The duke and duchess alternated their stares between Helena and Robert like spectators at a tennis court.

  Then, in the show of arrogance she’d come to expect of him, the marquess collected her wrist, and skimmed the empty card.

  She tugged. “I don’t.”

  He returned his attention to her face. “You do not what, Miss Banbury?”

  As though to accentuate the full extent of how ill suited she was to this world, a strand escaped her chignon and fell over her brow. “Dance.” Of all the tutors and instructors Ryker had hired her through the years, there had never been a need for a dance master.

  “You do not . . . ?”

  Nor had she seen the need or benefit of wasting funds on such a frivolous activity—until now. “Dance,” she again supplied, waving to the couples completing the intricate steps of some set or another. “I do not dance.” Now this inability only accentuated further her oddness amongst this world.

  A frown hovered on Robert’s lips. What accounted for that faint expression? Was it disapproval for the woman he’d agreed to help? A pang struck in her chest.

  “A stroll about the dance floor, then?” He held his elbow out.

  “Go along, Helena,” the duke urged. “Lord Westfield is one of the good ones.”

  One of the good ones who’d entered her rooms, kissed her senseless, and then shattered her world. One of the good ones, indeed. Helena tamped down a private smile, and reluctantly placed her fingertips on his sleeve.

  Grateful to be free of the duchess’s constant glowering, she kept her gaze trained forward. Again, years away from company, with only her laconic brothers for companionship, she’d little practice with matters of discourse.

  Ever the proper nobleman, Robert broke the silence. “You do not dance,” he whispered, that obvious fact coming from the corner of his mouth. “That is a detail you may have mentioned, yesterday.”

  “You did not ask,” she returned, eyes trained forward.

  He continued in hushed tones. “You are making the whole manner of your courtship—”

  “Our courtship,” she interrupted.

  “Vastly more challenging.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I expect strolling about the dance floor is statement enough for the guests present.”

  He brought them to a stop beside a tall Doric column, shifting his body so he placed himself between her and the gazes of the other lords and ladies present. “Ah, but strolling around the ballroom is markedly different than dancing, Helena.” His breath fanned the shell of her ear, and her eyelashes fluttered wildly.

  “I-Is it?” she managed, hating that faint quality of her
tone.

  “Oh, yes,” he whispered, dipping his head lower still, and the male scent of him, brandy, blended with mint, cast a quixotic spell.

  She’d long despised spirits, but on this man, it was more intoxicating than any potent brew. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep, heady breath.

  “All it will take is my hand over the small of your lower back as I draw you close to make it very clear that my attentions are not to be challenged.”

  Helena could make right and reason out of any set of numbers with barely any effort. That comforting order had been her lifeline when so much of her life had been ugly and unclear. But there was no order to the way this made her feel. There was no way she could neatly reason out what she felt in his presence. This man had a mastery of words that had the power to weaken. Pull yourself together, girl. Helena forced away the seductively thick haze he’d thrown over her and she blinked back that fog. His efforts here were nothing more than a bid to present the very façade she’d asked of him a day earlier.

  And for some inexplicable reason, she hated that his was nothing more than an expert show put on by a rogue.

  “You are indeed, correct,” she said quietly, and he went still. “Given our . . .” She searched her gaze about, but Robert’s positioning continued to shield her from Society’s view. “Relationship, it would certainly be beneficial that I take part in certain activities that ladies partake in.” Grateful to have logic restored, she gave a decisive nod. “It is settled.”

  Robert angled his head. “Settled?”

  “Why, you’ll need to instruct me.”

  . . . You’ll need to instruct me . . .

  For the scheme Helena had enlisted his aid in, he didn’t give a bloody jot that she couldn’t paint or ride. He did, however, for entirely selfish, roguish reasons, ones that had absolutely nothing to do with said scheme, very well care that the lady could not dance.