Ah, so he was “my lord” again, was he?
Robert reached past her and pressed the door handle. “I was escorting my sister here.” He paused. “And then seeing to business with my man-of-affairs.” A flash of understanding brightened her eyes, which she quickly concealed. He motioned her inside. “After you, Miss Banbury.” She’d had as much intention of visiting this bookshop than he had of attending Almack’s that night. His suspicion roiled all the more.
She cocked her head, and looked at the open doorway to Robert, and then wetting her lips, she stepped inside.
“There you are, Robert.” His sister, a book in hand, came skidding to a stop before them. Surprise marred her face. “Miss Banbury! Hello,” she said with a widening smile.
Helena sank into a curtsy. “My lady.”
Beatrice tucked the small leather volume under her arm, and held out her opposite hand for Helena’s. “Oh, please, you must call me Beatrice. Would you care to join me?” Before Helena could formulate a reply, his sister gathered her hand and placed it on her arm, leading them away.
Helena cast an almost desperate glance over her shoulder, and he winked.
Mayhap, the lady would think twice with dissembling. His lips twitched.
Just then, Beatrice said something commanding the other woman’s notice, leaving Robert alone . . . to consider, just what business Miss Helena Banbury, daughter of a duke, former worker at the Hell and Sin Club, had in this end of London.
As his sister’s laugh rumbled from somewhere within the shop, he folded his arms.
Helena had her secrets, that much was clear.
And Robert was determined to figure out just what those secrets were . . . whether the lady wished to share them, or not.
Of all the rules ingrained into her, she’d been schooled on evading notice from the moment Ryker had rescued her. Not only had she been discovered today, Robert also knew she was lying.
And Helena only knew because she’d spent so much of her life with liars and thieves, and suspicious stares, that she’d recognized her paltry attempt at prevarication, and the glint of suspicion in Robert’s usually warm gaze.
If she were wise, she’d be focusing on the fact that he’d caught her red-handed. So why could she not rid her mind of his efforts on behalf of a common street thief? Warmth spilled into her heart and she closed her eyes. A boy whose name he’d taken time to learn, and whom he’d given a choice to, in a world where those of her station had few.
“Have you been here before, Miss Banbury?”
Heart hammering, Helena’s eyes flew open. Robert’s sister stared patiently at her. Her mind raced as she tried to drag forth the young woman’s question. “Please, call me Helena,” she insisted. “And no, I’ve not.” As soon as the truth slid out, she silently cursed and stole a glance over her shoulder for Robert. He remained at the front of the shop, arms folded, staring boldly.
“Come along.” Beatrice guided her farther down the aisle until Robert was no longer in sight. “He is a wonderful brother,” she said as she skimmed the dusty titles on the floor-length shelf. “But he is ever so protective. Even now he should be at his meeting, but he remains here.” She lowered her voice to a soft whisper. “Though I suspect your unexpected appearance has just as much to do with his decision to stay.”
Cheeks heating, Helena managed a smile, and opted to speak to the lady’s former remark. “I well know about overprotective brothers.” Men who’d trust her with the finances of their successful gaming establishment but also believed her undeserving of any real control in her future.
“Do you?” Beatrice looked up from her perusal. There was curiosity in her gaze.
Unnerved by the ease with which this woman spoke, Helena glanced down at the tips of her slippers. The only ladies she’d ever had any dealings with had been in the streets, and those women had yanked their fine cloaks and gowns away as Helena had woven herself between them. “I do,” she said at last.
“Are you close with them?” The young lady’s gentle probing brought a lump of emotion to Helena’s throat.
Since Ryker had sent her away, she’d spent so much time angry and bitterly aggrieved over his interference in her life. She’d embraced the betrayal from each of them, because it was far easier to fuel her anger and resentment than to think about how desperately she missed them. “I am,” she said softly.
“Do you see them often?”
At the relentless questioning, Helena hugged her arms to her stomach, and glanced wildly about. Peers didn’t probe. They saw on the surface, and never bothered to learn anything more about a person, and yet Robert, and now his sister, did in ways that exposed Helena, and brought down years’ worth of walls she’d built up. “I did.” Before they sent me away. “We are.” Were. “As I said, close.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “Very close.” Though could they ever be again, when she returned in three months’ time?
Which only raised the reminder that her time would soon end here; and there would be no more Diana or Beatrice, and more . . . there would be no more Robert. Agony pulled at her heart. Oh, God, how to account for this vicious blade twisting in her chest? “They are protective,” she supplied, feeling the other woman’s stare on her.
“Aren’t all elder brothers?” Wry amusement underscored that handful of words.
They shared a look, as a kindred connection was born.
“It doesn’t matter that you are three and twenty.” Or in Helena’s case, four and twenty. “Or that you know your mind.” The lady gave her head a rueful shake. “Nothing matters beyond a lady’s marriage, does it?” That soft, faintly spoken question barely reached Helena’s ears. “Gentlemen wouldn’t expect a lady to be anything but a lady.”
She’d spent her life believing herself so very different than all these flawless ladies, only to find amidst a dusty row of books that they were more alike than she could have ever believed. “Not to Society,” Helena said quietly. When the woman lifted a confused gaze, she clarified. “To Society, they expect you . . . women, to wed, to be a husband’s property, even as you do not want to cede every part of yourself over to a man.”
Beatrice’s eyes lit and she nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.” That single word emerged as a kind of prayer.
“It is why it is important to hold on to you.” For Helena, the sense of control she’d found in a world so wholly lacking in it for women had been numbers.
Beatrice stole a glance about, and then moved closer to Helena. “I write.” Then her cheeks pinkened. She pulled a book from the shelf and turned it over to Helena.
Accepting the small tome, she skimmed the gold embossed title. Rogues, Rakes, Rapscallions, and Other Wicked Gentlemen . . .
“It is for my . . . work,” Robert’s sister explained. “You see, I am conducting research and . . .” She peeked about. “And I wish to use my knowledge to help other ladies.” By the flat set to her pretty, bow-shaped lips, Beatrice Dennington intended to say nothing further on her pursuits.
Helena turned the book over and the young woman hurriedly accepted it. “I expect I might be able to provide additional . . . research should you ever require it.” Given all she’d witnessed at the Hell and Sin Club, she herself could write a book, if she could properly assemble those words into a semblance of anything someone wished to read.
“Truly?” Beatrice asked on a reverent whisper.
Guilt needled at her. Given the other woman’s kindness and willingness to share with Helena, she at least owed Robert’s sister the truth of her background. “I spent the last ten years in a gaming hell, my lady.”
A brassy bell chimed at the front of the shop, indicating someone had entered. Otherwise, silence stretched on, and heat stained Helena’s neck and bathed her cheeks. She’d always found pride in that part of her existence. So why this sudden awkwardness in sharing that piece? Because ladies don’t know anything of those hells. It was one thing to read a book about rakes and libertines. Quite another to actually witness those me
n visiting their clubs and visiting with whores.
“Do you know, Helena,” Beatrice said at long last. “I think we are going to be very good friends. Very good friends, indeed.” And a spirited glimmer she’d only seen in her own eyes lit Beatrice’s. “I can certainly see why Robert’s fallen in love with you.”
Helena stilled. She shook her head.
Beatrice nodded.
Helena gave another shake.
Beatrice nodded once more. “Yes.”
Her heart gave a funny little leap. “Oh, no. No,” she said, turning her palms up. “You are mistaken. He does not. It is . . .” Pretend. She stopped from speaking that truth. Apparently they’d both delivered a convincing performance. As much as she liked Robert’s sister, she didn’t know her enough to share the details of what had brought her into the marquess’s life.
“It is . . . ?” Beatrice gently prodded.
“It is . . .” Furthermore, anything real between them was impossible. Men such as Robert didn’t fall in love with women like her, and when they did, they only made those women their mistresses, while binding themselves to cold, unfeeling ladies like the duchess.
“Do you not love him?” Four creases lined the lady’s noble brow.
“Do I love him?” she choked.
Robert’s sister stared expectantly back.
Of course she didn’t love him. She’d known him but a handful of days. Footsteps sounded at the end of the aisle and she looked up, saved from formulating a response. Robert stopped and leaned against the bookshelf, and grinned. His lazy half grin was the kind of smile belonging to a man who well knew he was being discussed. With a wink, he continued strolling. Only as he disappeared around the next shelf, the panicky pressure weighting on her chest deepened.
How could she possibly love him? She’d not even liked him. He’d been arrogant and he’d stolen her knife, (a knife he still had) and her heart and . . . Helena shot a hand out, grasping the edge of the nearest shelf. Oh, God, I love him. Loving Robert was madness. There could never be a future between them. Why, not . . . ? Why can’t you have a life with him . . . ? Because he would be a duke and she was a bookkeeper, and more, she would always be a bastard. Neither suitable duchess material. Nor did she even want to be a duchess . . . Oh, God. Her breath came ragged in her own ears.
His sister cut across her rapidly careening out-of-control thoughts and patted her hand. “Is it as difficult as I’ve read in books?”
“My lady?” she managed, scrabbling at the fabric of her gown, as she tried to muddle through her emotion.
Beatrice clarified. “Being in love?”
She closed her eyes for a long moment, and then gave a jerky nod. It is worse.
The longer she was here in this world, the more she lost of herself. “If you’ll excuse me?” she asked, her voice emerging on a high-pitched tenor that earned a concerned look from Robert’s sister. “I must return home.”
The lady’s pretty features fell. “Do say we’ll meet again?”
Helena nodded. She’d promise the woman anything to be free of this place and her careening thoughts.
“Another trip to St Giles Circus?” She was relentless. “Shall we say Saturday, then?” She peered around Helena’s shoulder. “Did you hear that, Robert? Will you be so good as to escort Miss Banbury and me back on Saturday morn?”
Helena whipped her head around. Robert stood, arms folded at his chest. “Of course.” Why must he be so stealthy?
“Splendid,” Beatrice said with a clap of her hands. “It is decided.”
Helena swallowed hard. Indeed, it was. “I-If you’ll excuse me?” She stammered over her words in her bid to make a quick retreat. Then, spinning on her heel, she rushed past Robert, and darted from the shop.
She’d never survive three months more here. Not without losing her heart and her sanity.
She needed to go home.
Chapter 17
Rule 17
Nobles can never be trusted.
Shortly after Helena fled Ye Olde Bookshop, Robert had continued on to Oxford Street for his appointment. The reports remained as grim as they’d been since his first meeting with the aged man-of-affairs a month prior. The man, Stonely, was so mired in the past that despite Robert’s arguments to the contrary, he believed selling off all those late-made advancements of his grandfather was the only solution for the Dennington family.
Hours later, with his head bent over the ledgers, Robert squinted at the damned numbers. Except no matter how long he looked, not a blasted thing changed.
With a black curse, he dug his fingers into his temples and sat back in his chair.
Given the dire appointment with old Stonely, Robert ought to be attending the ledgers before him with far greater care.
Instead, Helena fully laid siege to his every thought. With their every meeting, his well-ordered world was becoming more and more muddied.
By God in hell—
He liked Helena Banbury.
Nay. He’d always liked her. Desired her. Admired her.
This discovery, however, was vastly different.
Robert stared absently down at the neat columns of grim numbers. He cared for her—a lot. His mind shied away from anything further. After all, his heart was incapable of more. He absently drummed the back of his pen on the open page. Particularly given that it had been just a week since the hellion who’d interrupted a tryst with Baroness Danvers had crashed into his world. The same vixen who’d threatened to gut him with a knife, and called into question his honor and his intelligence.
His lips twitched. And not only once.
Yes, for all that—he cared for her.
Are you familiar with Argand’s work, my lord? . . . He is responsible for the geometrical interpretation of complex numbers . . .
She enjoyed mathematics and fashioned herself as something of a bluestocking. She didn’t give a jot that he would one day be a duke. And she placed the safety of a child’s life on the street before her own.
With a groan, he tossed his pen down. It landed on the desk with a soft thunk. In truth, how could one not like Helena Banbury? She was refreshingly honest amidst a sea of falsity, and more . . . she was a woman of strength who’d shown more courage defending a boy in the streets than the combined strength of an entire regiment in the King’s army. He pulled open his center desk drawer and withdrew a heavy dagger, crusted with rubies, turning it over in his hands.
It had been far easier when he didn’t like her, and simply felt a sense of obligation to right the wrong that he’d inadvertently done that drunken night at the Hell and Sin. He touched the tip of his finger to the sharp blade and a single drop of blood pebbled. Staring at the fleck of crimson, his mind raced.
He’d resolved to never be a fool again where a young woman was concerned. Lucy’s treachery had made him wary of the motives of all. Robert wiped the blood from his finger, then scrubbed his hands over his face. When he was with Helena Banbury, however, he didn’t think of Lucy and the bitterness of her betrayal . . . or his grandfather’s hand in that awakening. He simply thought—of her. Helena Banbury with her reddish-brown hair and blunt honesty.
How could he possibly forget twelve years of bitterness after knowing a lady but a week? Because she’d forced him to see aspects of who he was, and how other people lived, in ways that he’d selfishly failed to note. He’d spent years despising his grandfather and Lucy Whitman for the ugliness in their souls, but what about who Robert had been?
I’m not reckless . . . I wager no more than most gentlemen . . . I keep one mistress and I’m careful to never beget a bastard on those women . . .
Those words he’d tossed at his father now floated back, words he’d uttered as a statement of his character.
Filled with a restlessness, Robert tossed Helena’s dagger down and strode over to the sideboard. Grabbing the nearest decanter and snifter, he proceeded to pour himself a glass and then took a long, slow swallow, welcoming the warm trail it blazed.
He’d always known precisely what his responsibilities were as future duke—those realities never more clear with all his father had imparted. Though he was unwed still at three and thirty, he’d every intention of doing right by the line . . . just not to save the family from financial ruin. To do so would be bartering his own self-worth when he’d long condemned Lucy Whitman for that same ruthlessness.
I’m not worried about you being the same as other noblemen . . . I worry about you setting yourself apart from them . . .
Those words once tossed at him by his father were now sharpened with an acuity he’d previously lacked—because of Helena. He stared down into his drink. Years ago, he’d determined the exact manner of woman he would wed. She would be a lady of the ton, whose open desire of his title would be the only honesty he’d come to hope for.
Now there was Helena, a woman who, even if he wished to make her his future duchess, would sooner return to that notorious club than be married to him. He frowned into the contents of his drink. Not that he wished to wed her. He didn’t.
There were too many reasons not to. Her disdain for polite Society, a sentiment he could, on most days, easily share. But more importantly, there was the life she wished for. Robert swirled the contents of his drink in a circle.
What if you do offer her marriage . . . ?
His hand shook, and liquid splashed over the rim, hitting his fingers.
A knock sounded at the door, and he looked up quickly, grateful for the interruption. “Enter,” he boomed.
His butler, Fuller, opened the door. “My lord, the Duchess of Wilkinson has arrived to see you.”
The duchess? He shot his gaze to the long case clock and frowned. Twenty minutes past ten. What matter of urgency would have the always-proper duchess here, now? Nervousness pulled at the edge of his consciousness. “Show her in,” he said, and the greying man took his leave.
A short while later, Fuller was escorting the poised duchess in. “The Duchess of Wilkinson.”
Robert swiftly set his glass down and quickly came over to greet one of his family’s oldest friends. “Your Grace.”
The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides Book 1) Page 21
