My Fake Rake

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.”