by Eva Leigh
“You mean brothels,” Grace noted. Her pencil moved across the page of her journal as she repeated the word.
“Don’t write that down,” Rotherby exclaimed. “It’s . . . er . . .”
“Not germane to the subject,” Seb filled in.
Before Grace could object, the duke plowed on. “In any event, I would ask you to take note of the men outside, and how they interact with the ladies. Not the older gentlemen who’ve settled into a comfortable middle age. The younger set.”
“The ones with the tightest breeches,” Grace noted. Her pencil moved in rapid strokes. “Showing off their thighs in an evident courtship display. Very common within the animal kingdom.”
“Are you sketching?” Seb asked. “Male thighs?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course. We have to use every available avenue to record our findings.” Grace held up her journal, and, true enough, she’d marked the paper with very accurate drawings of male femoral regions. She hadn’t neglected the crotch areas, either.
Seb glanced down at his own pantaloons. They had been perfectly serviceable not but five minutes ago. Perhaps a trifle faded, and not quite fashionable, but they did little to highlight his own physique. He looked like a collection of tree branches swaddled in wool—a far cry from the strapping blokes outside in buckskin breeches.
“Yes,” Rotherby said lowly, “a visit to my tailor is definitely on the agenda.” He waved toward the men outside. “Some of these chaps are trying too hard. They’re aping the Bond Street Roll and styling themselves like dandies. Pay no attention to them,” he added in a high-handed tone.
“Why not?” Grace demanded.
“Observe,” the duke said, flicking his finger in the direction of two men, one in a green waistcoat and the other in a pair of polished, tasseled boots.
As Seb and Grace looked on, a pretty young lady neared the pair. The men quickly pasted smirks on their faces, as if they were possessors of a secret about the woman that she herself could never know.
“Good God, their faces,” Seb noted under his breath. “As if anyone couldn’t see what they’re doing.”
“What are they doing?” Rotherby asked pointedly.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re trying to inflate their own social value while simultaneously diminishing her. Sorry,” he added with a deliberately condescending look to Rotherby. “Making themselves out to be grand so she feels small.”
“I know what you meant,” his friend snapped.
“With the intention that she will seek to raise her sense of worth by associating with them.” Grace sent Rotherby a patronizing glance. She spoke to him with an exaggeratedly slow and loud voice. “They want her to feel special if they talk to her.”
“I know what you meant, too,” Rotherby grumbled. “I did go to Oxford, for God’s sake. I’m not a completely overbred ninny.”
Grace caught Seb’s eye, and they both suppressed their laughter. It wasn’t fair to torment poor Rotherby—he was doing them a favor—but it was hugely entertaining to dent his ducal pride, and sharing the teasing with Grace made it even better.
“I see what you two are doing,” Rotherby said with annoyance. “And it’s fortunate I’m a man with a very long fuse or else I’d chase the both of you out into the street.”
“I run very quickly,” Seb countered.
“And having a brother makes me an expert in dodging a grumpy older man,” Grace added.
“Four and thirty is not old! To blazes with both of you.” Clearly irate, Rotherby started to rise, but when Grace lifted her hand in a placating gesture, Seb took hold of his friend’s jacket cuff.
“We’ll stop,” Grace said at the same time Seb insisted, “Here, now, we’re sorry.”
Looking somewhat mollified, Rotherby sat back down. “Don’t forget, I have six estates managers who report to me. Not to mention I’ve got Liverpool’s ear, so we can stop with the Rotherby’s a Buffoon tomfoolery.”
“Look outside,” Grace said, thankfully drawing attention to something other than mollifying Rotherby. “The woman just passed right by the dandies. Good lass.”
The two would-be rakes appeared momentarily crushed by being ignored, but only for a moment before donning their condescending expressions once more and swaggering down the street.
“A failure in every way,” Rotherby declared. “Too much affectation. Too desperate.”
One of the tearoom employees set a plate of cakes and little sandwiches on the table. “With Mr. Mohan’s compliments,” she said. “The cakes are baked fresh daily by Catton’s.” She curtsied and backed away.
“Then what do we look for?” Grace asked, picking up a sandwich.
“All well and good to tell us what not to do,” Seb agreed. He took a bite of cake. “Somebody out there has to be an example of a true and successful rake.”
“There.” Rotherby’s gaze skimmed back to the street. “The bloke in the burgundy coat. He knows what he’s doing.”
Curious, Seb turned his attention to the man in question. He moved easily, without exaggerated movement, but possessing sleek agility that carried with it an animal quality. Seb couldn’t quite determine what contributed to the man’s air, only that it subtly advertised erotic possibility. Perhaps it was his upright but not rigid posture. Perhaps it was the minute forward tilt to his pelvis, drawing attention there.
This man’s smile wasn’t a superior smirk. It was subtle and aware, as if he had things planned that anybody would eagerly agree to.
By the strictest societal standards, he wasn’t precisely handsome. It appeared as though he’d broken his nose years ago, and his chin was slightly soft. But he felt utterly confident in his looks. And that translated to an allure that caught every woman’s attention.
When he tipped his hat to a passing woman, she fluttered her eyelashes at him and fussed with her shawl.
They both stopped right in front of the window, and while the glass muffled the sound of their conversation, whatever the gentleman said to her was well-received.
“Damn.” Seb leaned forward. “Can’t hear what he’s saying.”
“It doesn’t matter what the words are,” Rotherby said. “Could be talking about biscuits or quizzing glasses. All that matters is how he’s looking at her.”
“Like she’s the only woman in existence,” Grace murmured.
Rotherby rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “Exactly so.”
A moment passed, and the man moved on, but the lady remained for a minute, gazing after him wistfully.
“Shouldn’t he have stayed?” Grace asked. “He might have made a conquest.” She shuddered. “Ugh. What a dreadful word.”
Seb shook his head. “As though sex is a battle with one victor and one who’s been defeated.”
“Some rakes will go for the quick seduction,” Rotherby said dismissively. “It’s a false equivalency between the number of women they bed and their value as a man. Selfishness and stupidity, the lot of it. No, a true and good rake promises that every moment with him gives pleasure. Not merely what happens in the bedchamber, but all the moments leading up to it.”
Seb wrote all of this down verbatim. It was all so damned fascinating. “Sex unites mind as well as body.” He’d known this to some extent, but to hear Rotherby, a man who’d had many lovers, express it thusly made it much more clear.
“The power of the imagination,” Grace said with a nod. “Of course.”
She and Seb shared a grin as though they had just discovered how to transform lead into gold. Nothing was better than a discovery. It was almost—but not quite—as good as sex.
Rotherby devoured a small iced cake before dusting crumbs off his hands. “Very good. You’re both learning. Now it’s time to put theory into practice.”
Chapter 7
A light rain began to fall just as Seb climbed into Rotherby’s carriage. He looked over his shoulder, concerned that Grace might get caught in the weather, but she was nowhere to be seen.
&nb
sp; “Don’t distress yourself.” Rotherby clapped a hand on Seb’s shoulder. “I saw her get into her own carriage. She got out of the rain just in time.”
“Ah. Good.” Seb exhaled and took the rear-facing seat, while his friend sat opposite him.
Rotherby knocked on the roof of the carriage and a moment later, they were off, heading toward Grace’s home. She’d instructed Rotherby to drive straight back to the stables so he and Seb could enter her home through the back, just in case any inquisitive neighbors caught sight of a ducal carriage outside.
Silence reigned for a few minutes. Thoughts churning like surf, Seb mulled over the lessons Rotherby had imparted back at the tearoom. The role of being a rake—of rakehood itself—seemed to come from within, from the intangible quality of masculine confidence, which was something that couldn’t be taught, only lived and experienced.
Seb had gone to bed with exactly five women in the course of his thirty-four years. His last lover had been the widow of a friend. It had been a comfortable, if not especially passionate, affair. Seb and Mary had amicably ended things three months ago when she’d decided she wanted to look for a new husband—a man who could comfortably support her, since her widow’s portion was a meager one. Knowing that he could not meet her financial expectations, Seb had stopped visiting her bed.
She was engaged now, to a mercer. He and Mary had crossed paths in Kensington, and nodded politely at one another. No tears. No rage or fury. No pleas to resume their affair. It was all quite . . . civil.
God. His sexual history was exceedingly tame, barely containing the makings of a Lothario. But he’d have to find manly assurance within himself . . . somehow.
“How long have you been friends with Lady Grace?” Rotherby asked abruptly.
Seb furrowed his brow, surfacing from the depths of his thoughts. “About four years, I believe, give or take a few months.”
“You don’t know the date specifically?”
“Why should I?”
“I thought bookish men kept journals.”
A corner of Seb’s mouth turned up at the word bookish. That was one way of describing him. “Observations and notes of an anthropological nature. That’s what I record in my journal. Chronicling my own life would make for dull reading.” He peered suspiciously at his friend. “Why would you ask about the date I met Grace?”
“Women like to know these things,” Rotherby said with an airy wave of his hand.
Seb nodded. He might know more about kinship structures and the societal configuration of a barter economy, but he could certainly trust Rotherby when it came to what women of British Society wanted. His friend was a favorite of women, even back in their Eton days, when young lasses from the village would sneak him notes and posies.
“I do remember that she was wearing a blue dress with a peach-colored ribbon sash,” Seb mused, thinking back to the day he’d met Grace. “She was smiling over a book she was reading, and then she asked if she could borrow a pencil because she’d forgotten hers and was too shy to ask the librarian if there was one she could borrow.”
“Did you give her a pencil?”
“Yes,” Seb said after a moment. The day unfolded in his memory like a Jacob’s ladder toy. “But it was my only one, so I tried to memorize the notes to write them down later.”
“Anything else you recall about that day?” Rotherby asked.
He’d stammered at her. He remembered that. An attractive woman whom he didn’t know had struck up a conversation with him, and he’d been his usual anxious self, worrying what to say and how to say it, and if she could tell how nervous he was speaking to her, with an added dose of apprehension that she might walk away or even laugh.
Yet a curious thing had happened whilst he’d fumbled for words: she’d gone on speaking in a friendly and warm voice, as if she didn’t mind at all that he was tongue-tied. When she’d asked him a question about his own field of study, she’d waited patiently for him to get past his faltering, giving him smiles and nods of encouragement.
He hadn’t seen judgment in her gaze, only amiable curiosity to learn more about him. And within minutes, he’d forgotten all about his anxieties. He could talk to her, be himself, without fear.
“She told me about a particularly fascinating creature called a skink, which is primarily found in the southern parts of the Continent.”
His friend’s brow furrowed. “What the hell is a skink?”
“A variety of reptile. That’s what she studies. Reptiles. Amphibians, too.”
“Not something darling and cuddlesome, like . . . I don’t know . . . puppies?”
Seb snorted. “I think there’s enough research done in the field of puppies. Reptiles and amphibians are her area of expertise.”
“Why?”
He blinked. “I . . . don’t know.”
Rotherby sat back, folding his arms across his chest. “So you know all this about her.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you have romantic designs on her?”
Alarm shot through Seb and he sat up straight, nearly slamming his head into the carriage’s ceiling.
He sputtered in indignation. “We’re friends. That’s all.”
“You’ve never talked about her.”
“It wasn’t relevant to the discussion.” Was that truly the case? Even from the beginning, he’d prized his friendship with her, and kept it close, as if discussing it might somehow rob it of its specialness. He couldn’t help repeating, “We’re merely friends.”
His alarm didn’t quiet when Rotherby gazed at him with a look of patent disbelief.
“Men and women can be friends,” Seb declared hotly, “without things becoming romantic or sexual.”
“True,” Rotherby said, inclining his head. “However. Lady Grace is also intelligent, amusing, and pleasing to the eye. Don’t you think so?”
“. . . I . . .” God, how long was the distance between Bond Street and Grace’s home?
He glanced at the door of the carriage. Jumping from a moving vehicle wasn’t one of his talents, but a person could always learn a new skill. The rain fell harder, drumming on the top of the carriage, but Seb didn’t worry about getting wet or muddy. He just wanted out of this bloody vehicle.
Rotherby said with a smirk, “The degree of your alarm makes me believe that you do consider her intelligent, amusing, and pleasing to the eye, as well.”
“I might.” Damn . . . was it true? He jolted with unwelcome understanding. “All I desire is keeping her categorized as a friend. In any case,” he added quickly, “that’s what she wants.”
Praise be, the carriage finally slowed, and a moment later, the footman opened the door to announce, “We’ve arrived, Your Grace.”
As Seb and Rotherby dashed across the stable yard, Grace opened the kitchen door. She waved them inside, calling above the rain, “Come in quickly before you’re soaked.”
Despite quickening their pace, both he and Rotherby collected enough precipitation to leave small puddles in the kitchen hallway. Seb almost offered to clean up the mess himself, but his mother always admonished him for trying to do the servants’ work for them. It didn’t matter that he’d grown up with a houseful of people paid to do his family’s bidding—he could never acclimatize himself to having someone else do a task he could do on his own.
“The servants have been sworn to silence, with a good deal of financial inducement to ensure it.” Grace waved them toward the stairs leading from the servants’ area of the house into the family’s living area. “We’ll have tea in just a few moments. Unless you prefer something stronger. Claret? Whiskey? I think that’s what gentlemen drink.”
“Alcohol will cloud my judgment.” Seb followed her up the staircase. He deliberately kept his head down to stare at his boots rather than repeat his mistake of looking at Grace’s figure.
“In that case,” Rotherby declared, “a dram of whiskey for all of us—that is, if you’ll join us, Lady Grace.”
“Do ladies drink whiskey in mixed company?�
� Seb asked.
“Perhaps they don’t,” Grace said, “but I will.” They reached the top of the stairs, then stepped into the corridor outside the ballroom. She murmured to a footman a request for liquor and three glasses. The servant nodded and disappeared to carry out her bidding.
She moved on to the ballroom, candles lit within to hold back the rain’s gloom. A cheerful fire burned in the fireplace at one end of the chamber, and a trio of chairs had been assembled close to it.
“It gets so terrifically cold in here when it’s dreary outside.” She stood in front of the fire, warming her hands. “But the amphibians adore this weather, so I can’t complain.”
“Holloway told me you study reptiles and the like,” Rotherby said, also coming to the fire but putting a respectful distance between himself and Grace.
Which left Seb with a less respectful position between them. He wedged his body into the gap, conscious of how little space separated his giant feet from the hem of her dress. He was like some creature from folklore, carved of rude clay and stone, lumbering beside a wise princess.
She smiled up at him, and his heart leapt into his throat. With difficulty, he swallowed it back down.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m what is now known as a herpetologist.”
Rotherby started. “You study . . . herpes? The disease?”
“Not herpes! Herpetology—the study of reptiles and amphibians.”
“They share the same root word,” Seb added.
“Which means to creep,” Grace said.
Rotherby made a face. “Slimy creatures that no one loves.”
“I love them,” Grace said with a smile. She sat down in one of the wingback chairs, and Seb and Rotherby followed suit. A servant entered the room, bearing a tray that held three glasses filled with amber liquid. She took one and Seb and Rotherby did the same. “It’s true that many amphibians have moist skins. Frogs and toads secrete mucus to keep their skins wet in order for them to properly breathe.”
Goddamn it, but she’s lovely.
The thought leapt into Seb’s mind as he watched Grace animatedly describing mucus, of all things.