Chapter 21
Rule 21
Do not let anyone inside your heart.
With her knees drawn to her chest, Helena sat at the window seat overlooking the London streets. Rain pinged off the crystal windowpane, and trailed a shimmery tear downward. Through the glass, she touched the tip of her index finger to one of those clear beads and followed its path until it converged with another drop and then they faded altogether.
Robert was set to arrive at thirty minutes past one o’clock to speak with the duke, and then their lives would be inextricably connected—forever. Her heart gave a funny leap.
Since she’d climbed abovestairs last evening, bathed, and sought out her bed, she’d lain awake, unable to sleep. This time it hadn’t been the nightmares that kept rest at bay. It had been him. Helena rested her forehead against the cool window.
Since she’d been summoned to Ryker’s office, he and her brothers had all believed Helena would choose the lavish life of polite Society. For more than a month, she’d been filled with a bitter resentment. How dare they see her as different than them? They’d impugned her honor, when they’d long touted that there was nothing more important in the world.
But . . . she was different than them.
Ryker, Calum, Adair, Niall, any member of the Hell and Sin Club family would lay down their lives to save one of their own. That devotion was borne of a bond that went back to the darkest, most dangerous days in the streets when they’d clawed and scraped to survive. Yet, for that familial allegiance, they had each constructed protective walls to keep everyone out—including one another.
They’d not asked questions about their pasts, or shared in their pain. Why, they’d not even readily confessed to being capable of it.
And she’d not truly appreciated the solitariness of that existence—until Robert. He’d slipped inside, when she’d worked so hard to keep the world out. With him, she spoke about the hell of her past, but also the joy she’d known.
That was a life she would have . . . one of love, where you did not fear letting someone in, because love didn’t weaken, it only made you stronger. Ryker and her brothers, shut away inside the Hell and Sin, would never know that.
Mayhap that is why they sent you away . . . ? Mayhap, Ryker saw what you yourself did not . . . That she’d wanted more of life, and she wanted all of it with Robert, but it could never be both.
In entering Robert’s world, she would be leaving behind the only existence she’d truly known. She’d be abandoning Ryker, Calum, Adair, and Niall; and the family they’d carved out for one another. By his rank, Robert could visit the Hell and Sin Club, but those men she called brothers would never, ever leave St Giles to enter a world they so despised.
Their unwillingness to so much as respond to a single one of the many missives she’d sent this past month was evidence that as long as she dwelled amongst the ton, she was dead to them.
She bit her lower lip hard. How was it possible to have your heart filled with equal parts joy and despair? For there would have to be a goodbye. Only it was never the one she’d imagined making.
“Oh, dear, you are sad.”
A soft voice sounded in the doorway. Helena twisted to face her sister. She hovered at the entrance with her arms hugged to her chest, uncertainty stamped in the delicate planes of her face.
“Oh, no. I’m not,” she said softly, swinging her legs around. “I . . .”
Her sister quelled her with an uncharacteristically somber look. “I am not a child, Helena. Just as I’ve come to see how my mother feels about your presence here, I also see the sadness you so often wear.”
Surprise brought her lips apart. Since she’d arrived she’d seen the always-optimistic Diana as an innocent, wholly incapable of seeing the world as it was around her. “I can be hopeful but also know what the world is truly like,” the girl said gently, and pulled the door closed behind her.
“I am so sorry,” Helena said quietly. Having been so judged through the years by her brothers, shame needled around her belly that she should have done the same to this young lady.
Diana drifted over, and hovered beside Helena’s seat. Stealing another peek at the closed door, she slid into the spot beside Helena. “You were right,” she said in a faint whisper.
Diana shook her head. “I didn’t see what the world was like. Not truly. I believed my mother would be as happy to have you here, as I and Papa were.” Her lips twisted with a new cynicism that struck sadness in Helena’s breast. Inevitably all innocence was destroyed—even amongst polite Society. But how she hated that Diana should be so transformed. “Then I thought mayhap the longer you were here, she would appreciate that you had a good heart.” The young lady hardened her mouth. “My mother is not a good woman, Helena.”
Helena pressed her lips together. Mayhap if she were one of those masters with words, she’d be able to at least manage a halfhearted protestation to that, more statement than anything else, utterance.
Her sister stretched out her palm, and Helena glanced down at the neat stack tied with black velvet ribbons. Her breath caught, and she swiftly jerked her gaze to Diana’s.
“I found these,” Diana explained, turning them over to Helena’s trembling fingers.
She yanked the ribbon free, and sifted through sealed note after sealed note addressed to Ryker. Oh, God. He’d not ignored her.
“My mother prevented them from being sent.”
Helena shook her head. “Why would she do that?” she whispered. Had Ryker known how miserable Helena had been, and seen her pleadings, there would have at least been the possibility he might have accepted her back. Why would the duchess have interfered when she might have been free of her husband’s bastard?
Diana lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “I think she quite hates you,” she said, and then slapped her palm over her mouth, as though she’d uttered a sailor’s curse.
Helena gave the young woman a gentle smile. For everything she’d endured, at the hands of people far crueler, the duchess’s hatred would never weaken her. “Yes, well for her hatred, there has always been you and the duke, kind and loving, and I focus on that good.” Because the alternative was to be destroyed by the darkness.
Her sister made a sound of protest. “And why should I not be kind to you? Would you hate me for sharing the blood of my mother?”
“Never.” Her answer was borne with the automaticity of truth. Diana had been as kind as if Helena had been a daughter gently bred and raised alongside her.
The young woman grunted. “Precisely.”
Helena dropped her gaze to the stack in her hands. No, the duchess’s hatred did not wound, but this betrayal . . . this gutted her. Helena’s throat worked. The woman had singlehandedly cut off all hope of communication with the only family she’d known—out of nothing more than sheer malice.
“My mother saw that not a single one of your letters ever reached our brother.”
Our brother. Helena startled. She’d not truly given thought to the fact that Ryker was as much Diana’s brother as Helena’s. He’d, of course, never recognize that familial connection. His heart was too hardened to ever set foot in this world, let alone see good in Lady Diana.
“Your maid is quite faithless, too, you know,” the woman said with a sudden mature knowing.
Actually, she didn’t. Helena frowned. How much else had escaped her notice that this young lady had seen?
Diana inched over on the seat, and lowered her voice to a soft whisper. “My maid, on the other hand, is not,” she said, stealing another glance about, and then fishing around the front of her apron pocket. She held out a single note.
Helena’s throat closed and she shook her head.
“I took the liberty of writing a letter on your behalf. Here,” she said, pressing the thick ivory vellum into Helena’s hands. “It is from Mr. Black.”
With greedy fingers, Helena grabbed the note, that link to the family she’d missed these past weeks, the people she’d thought abandoned her, not even deigning to answer a note. She tore into the page and worked a hungry gaze over the handful of sentences in Niall’s sloppy, ugly, smudged writing. Of course, Niall had long been the reasonable one of their family.
That familiar, inky mess raised a watery smile as she read.
Helena,
Your home is always here.
If you come, you will not be turned away.
Your brother would see you this afternoon at fifteen minutes past twelve.
~Niall
She slid her eyes closed, and folded the page. A tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye. Even that familiarity of Niall addressing all missives and written matters on behalf of Ryker filled her with that sense of being home.
Mayhap they’d not turn her away for marrying Robert. Mayhap they’d see what she herself had seen, a man who loved her, with all her flaws and imperfections.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Diana had opened the door Helena thought forever closed.
Her sister beamed and patted her on the hand. “Do not thank me, silly. That is what sisters do.”
Helena glanced over at the clock. Ryker was expecting her within the hour. He carved out his time with meticulous care and hers may as well have been a formal business meeting for the time he’d granted. She had but the brief meeting he’d allowed her to convince him of Robert’s worth, and to carve out a permanent connection between her and her family at the club.
Nervousness churned in her belly.
“Do you know what else sisters do?” Diana asked. She leaned close and whispered against her ear. “They also accompany one another into dangerous parts of London so they are not alone.”
Helena jerked her attention back. A mischievous sparkle lit Diana’s pretty eyes.
She was already shaking her head. “No.” Absolutely not.
The young woman surged forward. “Please, let me go with you.” The faint entreaty in that handful of words tugged at Helena.
The underscoring of desperation in Diana’s words spoke to a woman who chafed at the constraints where her capabilities were questioned, and she was expected to do whatever others thought was in her best interest, without allowing her the freedom of choice. Helena had battled a lifetime of frustration over it. She tamped down that weakening. “It is too dangerous,” she repeated. Dangers that extended beyond the mortal kind and into the realm of her sister’s reputation as a lady.
“Surely you do not think I’d allow you to go alone?” Diana pursed her lips.
Actually she did. Ladies didn’t risk their reputations by entering the seedy parts of St Giles. “I’ve already said, it’s not a place for you to be,” Helena said, earning a frown. She’d grown up in those alleys and had knifed grown men who’d dared to harm her. She’d not expose Diana to even the hint of danger.
Her sister surged to her feet, and planted her arms akimbo. “If it is too dangerous then, you are not going either.”
“I grew up there,” she pointed out. As such, she was long past ruin or fear where those streets were concerned. “I’d not risk your reputation or your life.” She loved her, this woman she’d been so determined to hate when she’d arrived.
“You think to protect me,” she shot back with far more mature knowing than Helena had credited. “As you’ve been protected in being forced here?” A new, determined glint flecked her usually soft eyes. “He is my brother too, and I’ve not even met him.”
Helena creased her brow. How had she failed to consider that familial bond shared by Ryker and Diana, one that would mean nothing to the man who despised all connections with their father? That truth alone would rock the trusting young lady. “You can’t,” she said at last. There were too many dangers and uncertainties.
“Very well.” The young lady firmed her lips, the words ratcheting up Helena’s apprehension. “Then I will make the journey myself.”
She frowned. The determined set to the girl’s narrow shoulders hinted at her resolve. If she didn’t bring her along, Helena had no doubt her sister, in a bid to stretch her wings, would eventually find a way. She cursed. “You must change your gown. No finery and wear the plainest cloak you own. And you will stay close by me at all times,” she ordered the beaming young woman. With each utterance, the folly in bringing this woman into the club sent warning bells blaring all the louder.
Diana nodded excitedly. “Then we must hurry,” she said, and grabbing Helena by the hand, she tugged her along. “We have your meeting, and then the marquess comes to speak with Father, and I expect he’ll expect to see you after that meeting.”
Except, as she hurried abovestairs, she could not fight back her unease in leading the duke’s legitimate daughter from the safety of her townhouse into a den of sin.
With an eerie similarity to his movements twelve years earlier, Robert climbed the steps of the Duke of Somerset’s townhouse and rapped on the front door.
His father’s loyal butler drew the door open almost instantly. “My father?” He turned over his hat and cloak.
There was no nervous swallowing or pale skin. There was no stammering or hastily averted eyes. “He is in his office, my lord,” the servant said with a slight smile.
Yes, because, where the late duke’s servants had been stone-faced and sacked for expressions of mirth, the new duke surrounded himself with a staff unafraid to show emotion.
“I will show myself in,” he said, and he started down the familiar path, through the long-hated corridors. New carpets had since been laid, and the paint changed, but the same ancestral portraits hung along the corridors.
For years he’d kept his gaze trained forward on this walk, avoiding looking around at the home that contained so much evil and sin, and dark memories that had forever shaped him. Now as he walked, all that agony of betrayal was . . . gone. The bitter resentment that had shaped him into the careless, heartless rogue he’d been had lifted, driven back by a spirited minx who’d boldly challenged him at every turn.
Robert drew to a stop beside a familiar ducal portrait. His late grandfather’s hateful visage stared back, commanding even in death. The hard set to his mouth, the coldness in his eyes, all expertly captured by the artist. Not a hint of frailty existed in the austere lines of those ducal features. He moved closer, peering into those eyes. He’d hated him when he’d been living, and hated him with an equal ferocity in death.
. . . you may have your tantrum and hate me for now, but someday you will thank me for this . . .
Robert would have wagered his very life that he’d never thank the bastard for his intervention. Shattered by Lucy’s treachery and the late Duke of Somerset’s machinations, Robert had been transformed into a coolly removed man who’d hardened his heart. Then Helena had stepped into his life and singlehandedly torn down every defensive wall he’d constructed, proving that his heart was still very much alive—and that it beat for her.
If not for the duke’s lesson that day, Robert would even now be wed to Lucy Whitman, and there never would have been a Helena Banbury.
Holding the duke’s gaze in the portrait, Robert gave a slight nod. Thank you . . .
As much as he’d hated his grandfather for his treachery, how could he not be grateful at having found the gift of Helena? Robert resumed his walk.
And for the first time since he’d strode this same path, he smiled.
He paused outside the heavy oak panel, and lifted his hand to knock when a strangled paroxysm penetrated the door. Robert shoved the door open, and paused. Seated behind his desk, his father held a kerchief to his mouth. His cheeks flushed red from the force of his coughing, and his frame shook.
Alarm skittered around Robert’s insides as he closed the door and stalked forward. “Father?”
His father waved his hand, and continued choking until he drew a jerky, raspy breath. He brushed the back of his hand across his damp brow. “Robert,” he said weakly, dabbing at his mouth with the white kerchief.
Robert’s gaze went to that fabric and he stilled as Helena’s observation crept into his mind. Your father appears . . . strained . . . He remained transfixed by the stark crimson stain upon that scrap. His father followed his stare, and gave him a long, sad look.
The energy went out of Robert’s legs as he sank into the nearest seat. He tried to drag forth words, opening and closing his mouth several times. No. Robert shook his head. He’d faked his illness to see he and Beatrice found respectable matches. He wasn’t truly ill.
The duke assembled his lips into the semblance of a smile. “Surely you know I’d never have the bad form to fake my own death?” he wheezed, and stuffed that bloodied cloth into the front of his jacket. “I am not my father, Robert.” His father closed his eyes, drawing in slow and uneven breaths.
Agony spiraled through him, and Robert dragged a hand through his hair, searching about. Where in bloody blazes was Hanson. “Dr. C—?”
“Has gone for the day.” Which implied the doctor attended his father daily.
He searched his gaze over his father. These past months he’d seen precisely what he wanted to see. Having been manipulated by so many before, he’d been blinded to the truth. Now he forced himself to look at that which he’d failed to note. The drawn lines at the corner of his father’s mouth. His haggard eyes.
“No.” That word rung deep from a place where in speaking it, he willed it to be.
His father nodded. “Yes.” There was a gentle insistence that came from a man who’d come to accept his own eventual fate.
Robert gripped the arms of his chair. “I don’t . . . I thought . . .” He curled his hands so tight he dug the flesh from them. What a bloody fool I am. Tears filled his eyes and he blinked back the useless sheen.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Robert,” his father said softly.
“I did everything wrong,” he said in harsh, guttural tones. He’d been precisely the self-centered, pompous bastard his father had all but pointedly accused him of being. And if it hadn’t been for Helena, how blind he still would be to everything that mattered. Robert scrubbed his hands up and down his face.
“I spent months resenting you,” he said, blankly. Shame, agony, and despair all twisted around his insides.
“And do you know why you did?”
A strangled sob worked its way up from a place where regret lived, and he shook his head.
“I was not the father you deserved, Robert.”
An agonized protest formed on his lips. Where most lords had cold, pompous bastards as sires, Robert’s father had loved his children. He’d not been driven by cold, powerful connections, but rather by the happiness of those children. And Robert had spent years secretly hating him, for allowing the late duke to control their family.
His father dissolved into another fit, and withdrew another kerchief. Robert surged out of his chair, but he waved him back to his seat. Closing his eyes, the duke laid his head along the back of his chair. “The thing about dying, Robert, is that you do not have time for lying to yourself or others. My father destroyed the happiness of so many. My sister and her husband.” He opened his eyes. “You.” A sad smile formed on his lips. “That is my greatest regret, that I wasn’t there more for you. I knew about Lucy Whitman.”
He groaned, making a sound of protest. “Stop,” he entreated.
“I knew you cared for her,” his father continued, giving his head a regretful shake. “I also knew my father was aware. And given what he’d done to his own daughter predicted what he was capable of. Particularly when his grandson, a future duke, showed less than suitable attentions for a nursemaid.” His last living parent leaned forward in his seat, and settled his arms on his desk. “I spoke to you recently about setting yourself apart, and not being like everyone else. I spoke from a place of knowing, Robert. I spoke to you as a man who never found the strength to defend his sister.” He held Robert’s gaze. “My son.”
Robert shoved forward in his chair and matched his father’s pose, leaning forward. “We are not responsible for the crimes of another. The duke was incapable of love and changing, and nothing you said or did would have ever swayed him. You were never to blame.” He implored him with his eyes to see that truth.
His father leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. “Thank you.”
At long last, the sharp, bitter divide, made by another, faded.
His father mopped his brow, and when he again looked at Robert, in this instance, the telltale marks of suffering lifted, and he was the robust, hearty father he’d always known. “So I take it you are here about your Miss Banbury.”
“I am.”
A pained smile pulled at his lips. “I like her a great deal.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Something of a bluestocking.”
Do you disapprove of a woman of knowledge . . . Robert managed his first real grin since he’d stepped inside this townhouse, that morn. “She is.” He reached inside his jacket and withdrew the special license. Where the late duke had been driven by nothing more than the succession of the Somerset title and the noble bloodlines to connect the family to, his father had only wanted to see his children settled before he left this earth. “I intend to marry her.”
His father gave an approving nod. “Smart boy,” he said in the same proud tones he’d used when Robert had mastered his lessons as a child. He folded his hands on his stomach. “Now, go along and speak to Wilkinson. I expect your Miss Banbury is waiting for you.”
Robert lingered.
“Go, Robert. To your future.”
And shoving back his chair, Robert took his leave of the townhouse that had contained so much sin and darkness, and made his way to the Duke of Wilkinson’s.
A short while later, Robert was being shown into the older duke’s office.
“Westfield, my boy,” he boomed, shoving his large frame into a stand as the door closed behind him.
“Your Grace.” Robert dropped a bow.
“Bah, no need for formality this day, eh?” he said, banging Robert on the back. “A glass of brandy?” Without awaiting a reply, he ambled over to the sideboard and proceeded to pour two snifters. He carried them over and motioned to the wingback chairs at the edge of the hearth.
Robert accepted the drink with a murmured thanks and slid into the comfortable folds. He opened his mouth to speak.
“You are here about my girl, I take it?” the duke supplied for him. “Helena,” he clarified.
“I love her,” he said, setting his brandy down on the table beside him.
The duke smiled over the rim of his snifter. “As I said, smart boy.” Then his usual grin slipped, and he looked into the contents of his drink. “I’ve made many mistakes in my life, Westfield. I wasn’t faithful to my wife. I failed Helena’s mother. But for all the regrets I carry, I will never regret my daughter.” He clutched his glass so tight, his knuckles whitened. “Her life has not been an easy one.” The duke lifted his eyes, blinking slowly. “I do not even know what her life was like before Ryker rescued her.” Ryker. The owner of the Hell, and Helena’s savior. The man would have Robert’s eternal devotion for it. “But I know it wasn’t a good one, just as I know you will bring her the happiness she deserves.” He lifted his glass. “So before we discuss the terms of the contract, shall we toast?”
Robert reached for his glass just as a distant shrieking reached through the office door, followed by frantic footfalls.
The door burst open and an out-of-breath duchess stumbled into the room. Tears ravaged her unwrinkled cheeks.
Robert and Wilkinson shoved to their feet.
“They are gone,” she cried, between her great gasping sobs.
Robert’s heart thumped an extra beat, as a slow-building dread started in his belly and fanned out.
“Who . . . ?”
“I-I never thought D-Diana would go,” the duchess sobbed into her hands, muffling her words. “It was just meant to be Miss Banbury.”
The dread grew, licking at his senses, threatening to pull him under.
“What are you on about?” her husband barked, stalking forward.
She lowered her hands to her sides. “Th-they are going to that c-club to meet M-Mr. Diggory.”
And Robert’s heart stopped. The monster who’d burned her. The man who stalked her dreams and owned her nightmares. His hand shook, sending brandy spilling over the rim of his glass, and he set the glass down.
“Who is Mr. Diggory?” The duke furrowed his brow, and when his wife continued to blubber and stammer, he took her by the shoulders in an uncharacteristic display of strength.
His wife sobbed all the harder. “He is the m-man who I turned her and her mother o-over to. You have to believe I would have never orchestrated their meeting had I known Diana would have accompanied h-her.” Then she launched into a new round of noisy tears. Wilkinson released her so quickly she stumbled backwards and caught herself against the side of the leather wingback chair. The man rushed across the room, and withdrew a case of dueling pistols.
A black sheen of rage descended over Robert’s vision, momentarily blinding him. “Where is she?” he seethed. “Where is she?” he thundered when she continued weeping.
“A-At that club,” she cried, as her husband handed one of his pistols over to Robert.
Wordlessly accepting the weapon, he leveled her with a frosty stare. This woman was responsible for the hell Helena had endured. She’d no doubt been the one to leave her fingerprints on her arms, and now she’d threatened her very life. Dread slithered around his belly. “By God, if anything happens to her, I will hold you personally accountable,” he seethed. With the duke bellowing for his servants, Robert sprinted from the room.
He’d only just found Helena, and he would be goddamned if he lost her now.