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?”
Please say no. Say no. Because if she said yes, that rapidly growing envy inside would consume her.
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.
Oh how she envied the girl that uncomplicated joy. With her sister gone, and left alone with her own musings, Helena carried her book over to the window seat and skimmed her chipped fingernails over the gold lettering of Jean-Robert Argand’s name. Helena’s life was so much more like this man’s, a self-taught mathematician who’d managed the accounts of a bookshop, than the one she awaited.
A man she’d been waiting on for several hours.
Though, as it did involve numbers and she was everything precise where those digits were concerned, she’d counted seven waking hours. Or four hundred and twenty minutes. Or if one wished to be most accurate, twenty-five thousand, two hundred seconds.
That was how long she’d been waiting for Robert’s visit.
Which was . . . peculiar. She didn’t even like the gentleman. He was the man who’d gotten her sent off to the fancy side of London, and he was part of her plan to evade suitors for the remainder of the Season.
Yet . . . Helena drummed her fingertips on the top of her book. If that were the case, why was she, in fact, sitting here waiting . . . for him? Why did you feel this great relief at Diana’s earlier words about the marquess? It didn’t make sense and she was, if anything, sensible.
Only, you’ve never been truly sensible around this gentleman . . .
From the night he’d stumbled into the private halls of the Hell and Sin Club, she’d broken one of the most important rules in approaching the drunken stranger. Then she’d returned his kiss and hungered for his embrace.
Filled with a murky confusion, Helena returned her attention to the small leather tome. He was just a man. A man, who with his clever tongue, and even more clever lips, had proven himself the wicked sort she’d been warned away from. She firmed her resolve. And she would do well to remember as much when he came and delivered a hopeless dance lesson—all with the purpose of putting his hands on her body.
If he came.
Seated in her familiar window seat, Helena looked outside at the busy London streets. Her heart tripped a beat. As though she’d conjured him, Robert drew his powerful black mount to a stop. In a near repeat of yesterday’s visit, a young boy came forward, and he turned the reins over to the child.
Swiftly lowering her feet to the floor, Helena jumped up. She ran her fingers down the front of her soft yellow skirts. Hideous color. Even she who didn’t know a jot about fashion knew that women with deathly white skin should never, ever wear those pale hues. Then, mayhap, that had been the duchess’s intentions?
Not that it mattered. She began to pace. It hardly mattered what she wore in Robert’s presence. Theirs was an act. An adult charade, and nothing more.
“His Lordship, the Marquess of Westfield,” Scott intoned from the doorway.
Helena emitted a startled shriek, and knocked against the table, sending her copy of Argand tumbling to the floor.
“My lord.”
The butler gave her a pointed look and she flared her eyes. “Refreshments.”
The old man gave a pleased smile. “As you wish, Miss Banbury.” His rheumy eyes sparkled with approval.
Again, that sense of . . . belonging filled her. Sentiments she’d only known amongst her brothers. Feelings she’d thought she’d never know outside of the comfort and safety of her world.
What is happening to me?
Robert had bedded countless numbers of skilled widows and clever courtesans. Sometimes together. But never had he lain awake, hungering for something as innocent as a dance with the spirited Helena Banbury. That anticipation had only grown in his short ride over this afternoon.
And by the lady’s flushed cheeks and parted lips, she was not wholly immune to him.
“Shall we?” He held out a hand, and she darted her tongue out and ran it over the seam of her lips.
“I-I do not think with the furniture there is space enough for a lesson.” He smiled at the regret in those words.
“Indeed, there is not,” he concurred, and her expression fell. He offered her his elbow.
She eyed his elbow a moment, and then looked to him. “What are you doing?”
Robert brushed his knuckles along her sharp jawline. “Evading your maid, who is no doubt already being fetched.”
The lady pressed her mouth into a flat line. “And I take it you are proficient in avoiding being discovered with women?” A slight edge underscored that supposition, telling all the same.
The actuality of it was, he, in fact, was skilled in carrying out clandestine meetings and wicked assignations behind his host’s parlor doors. After the night he’d bore witness to Lucy’s treachery, he’d found a safe pleasure in all those meaningless entanglements. “I wish to dance with you,” he said quietly, and with no small amount of shock he realized his words did not come from the easy store of pretty comments and praise he had on the ready.
Helena peered at him. Did she seek the veracity of his profession? He went still under her scrutiny, and then the lady rolled her eyes. “You needn’t play the rogue for my benefit. Where are we to dance?”
It was perfectly reasonable for her to see falsity in his claims, and yet disappointment tightened his belly. Disappointment that, for the first time in twelve years he’d spoken without the intent of seduction, and Helena had seen nothing more. Plastering on a perfectly practiced grin, Robert slid her fingers into his sleeve. “Having hidden in these halls as a child, I’ve the benefit of knowing my way around with some familiarity.”
Her lips twitched. “I expect you were troublesome.”
“Oh, most,” he easily concurred, ringing a laugh from her, and he missed a step. Her face wreathed in a smile, and cheeks flushed from her contagious joy, she was a siren.
Helena lifted her sparkling gaze, and some of the light dimmed. “What is it?”
Unnerved, Robert forced a grin. “I was simply thinking of all my outrageous antics.” He neatly steered her down the hall, leading her on a twisting and turning path through the mammoth residence. Yes, the lady’s poor maid would need a map to locate her mistress. Robert grinned.
“Tell me.”
How direct she was. Where ladies prevaricated and spoke with deliberate words, she commanded.
“Well, there was the summer party, I gathered sheets from all the guest chambers, knotted them together, and made a makeshift rope.” As a boy of eight, he’d believed his parents would, if not be pleased, at least appreciate that he’d not touched the linens on any of the beds occupied by their family.
“For what purpose?”
He grinned at her. “Why, I, at the ripe age of eight, I fashioned myself an explorer.” She giggled and again he tripped over his thoughts. Those carefree, innocent expressions of mirth, so common and practiced in other women, were as rare as a fire rainbow with this woman. Lest he kill that fleeting joy, Robert rushed the remainder of the story out. “I tied the sheets together and knotted one end around the balustrade that overlooked the foyer with the express intention of climbing down.” Robert spread his hands wide.
She widened her eyes. “Surely it was not as high as—”
“The duke’s foyer?” he neatly interrupted. “Higher.” His lips quirked. “I made it nearly three quarters of the way down.” Before his weight had pulled free the less than impressive knot he’d worked around the balustrade. “I suffered nothing more than a sprained arm, and a month’s long loss of dessert following evening meals.”
Helena slapped a hand over her mouth, stymieing the amusement on her full lips. Her shoulders shook with the force of her laughter, and her mirth contagious, Robert joined in. He didn’t speak about his past, any part of it, with anyone. What was it about her that had called forth this particular memory?
Unease rolled through him. This off-kilter effect Helena Banbury had on him was a sentiment he’d believed himself immune to after Lucy’s betrayal, and yet how easily she threw his thoughts and emotion into tumult? Eager to divert the discourse to safer grounds, Robert steered her to the back of the duke’s townhouse and brought them to a stop beside the doorway that emptied out into the duchess’s prized gardens. An image flitted in his mind of who she would have been as a child of eight, a gangly girl, in all manner of mischief. “What of you, Helena, what were you like as child?” he asked as he pushed the door open. He took several steps before he realized Helena remained in the doorway.
Gone were all hints of mirth. In its place was a dark somberness that sent a chill skittering along his spine. She forced a smile that stretched her cheeks. “I thought we were not to speak of the past.” There was an underlying thread of desperation that hung on that reminder, and a vise squeezed about his lungs.
He’d no right to her secrets. But he wanted them all the same.
“Come, your lesson, then,” he urged gruffly, and without hesitation, she drew the door closed, and stepped into his arms.
“We’ll not bother with anything beyond a waltz,” he said quietly, angling her in his arms, and guiding her hand up to his sleeve. “This is most conducive.” He settled his hand on the small of her back, bringing her body closer. A hungering to cup her buttocks and drag her closer filled him.
“Most conducive to what?” Her tremulous question hinted at her also weakening control.
Robert lowered his mouth to hers so only a hairsbreadth separated them. “Why, for touching you,” he breathed. Her lashes fluttered and he guided her into movement.
Her eyes shot open, and she stumbled against him.
“You enjoy mathematics,” he said matter-of-factly, and Helena stared unblinking at him, promptly missing another step. “Think of dancing in terms of your calculations. Concentrate on the numbers.” He hummed a discordant tone that earned another of her elusive smiles. “Pay attention,” he rebuked. “It is a one-two-three—one-two-three,” he murmured. “Remember all the beats of the waltz are equal.” He guided her back. “You start with the right foot and you go back on the first step with the right foot.” He dipped his brow to hers. “Then side with the left and close right foot to left.” Angling her body closer still, he led her through the rhythmic movements.
Cheeks flushed, Helena chewed at her lower lip, and missed a step.
“Concentrate,” he whispered. “Think of the numbers, Helena. Think of the steady one-two-three.” They continued through the first stilted, then gradually smooth, movements, as their bodies together found the rhythm. “One-two-three,” he murmured, waltzing her around the duchess’s prize rose bushes.
As the moments fell away, he moved his hand lower, to the small of her back, just above her buttocks, and her breath caught. “This is the touch,” he continued in low tones. “This is the one that any gentleman will see and know.”
Her lips parted as she drew in a shuddery breath. “Know what?”
“That you are mine.” In this game of pretend that suddenly felt all too real.
The back of Helena’s legs knocked against a stone bench, forcing them to a jerky stop. They stood, bodies flush, their chests rising and falling in a matched, heavy rhythm. Robert moved his hand up, folding his palm about her nape, and angled her head up.
Their lips met in a fiery explosion and on a low moan, Helena twined her fingers about his neck, meeting his kiss. He slanted his mouth over hers again and again, working his hands over her body, exploring the curve of her hips, and the small swells of her breasts.
He dragged his lips away from hers and she cried out, searching for his mouth, but Robert continued his quest. With his lips, he explored the long arch of her neck, sucking at the soft skin where her pulse pounded, and then lower. He quickly worked the fabric of her décolletage lower, and worshiped the satiny expanse of flesh with his lips. “So beautiful,” he whispered. How had he failed to see it before, this beauty that would make sailors flail themselves against the rocks at sea. Her legs weakened, and he collected her to him, cupping his hands about her buttocks and dragging her close to his jutting shaft.
“Robert,” she rasped, his name emerging as a keening moan. She parted her legs.
Sitting on the stone bench, Robert settled Helena on his lap, and worked his hand up her skirt. “I’ve hungered for this since I awakened in your bed,” he growled, hating that even now, he didn’t recall the moments they’d shared because of his drunken state that night. He again claimed her mouth and slid his tongue inside.
She boldly met that thrust and parry, matching the intensity of his kiss. His breath came heavily and he found the slick folds of her womanhood.
Robert swallowed her sharp cry with his mouth, and proceeded to work her with his fingers, toying with her nub, exploring her. He slid a finger inside her channel and she stiffened about him. Then, with a long, agonized groan, she grinded into him, thrusting rapidly against his palm with her body, urging him to finish her.
“Please,” she begged against his mouth, and that entreaty from this bold, commanding woman, drove him mad with desire. Increasing the pace of his strokes, he pressed the heel of his palm against the silky curls shielding her womanhood, and Helena’s body jerked. Then in a glorious display of sensual abandon, she tossed her head back and cried out, thrusting and gyrating, coming in long-rippling waves, and he rang every drop from her, until she collapsed against him, breathless and sweaty. Never more had he wished he were a rogue in the truest sense, because then this blasted sense of honor would not keep him from lying himself between her thighs and thrusting himself deep inside her hot, welcoming heat.
Robert folded his arms around her, holding her against his chest until his heart slowed to a normal cadence. As they silently stood, and he righted her garments, a sense of panic pulled at the corner of his senses. Not since Lucy Whitman had a woman held this pull over him. And if he were not careful, with her candidness and bold ways, Helena had the power to shatter those well-constructed defenses he’d built in years past.
Which would be folly, indeed, especially in a woman so determined to cloak herself in the shrouded mystery of her past.
Not for the first time, questions about Helena Banbury whispered around his mind.