My Fake Rake

“The human machine is also a faulty one.” Seb turned as the tailor adjusted his stance.

“Appeared to me like your machine was steaming.” Rotherby picked up a newspaper from atop a nearby table, but it was clear by the speed in which he turned the pages that he wasn’t reading a bloody syllable. “Is there anything going on between you two?”

Seb’s jaw went tight. “I shall say it one last time. We. Are. Only. Friends.”

He had to keep telling himself that. If he let himself believe there was a whisper of true attraction on her part, he’d be in danger. Considerable danger.

Because these past mornings, he’d awakened with his body humming in anticipation of seeing her. Because he collected impressions of the world around him with the intention of telling her about what he’d seen. Because, even now, he drifted into fantasies of her staring up at him with a hungry gaze, and her hands sliding up his chest as she lifted onto her tiptoes.

“She didn’t look at you like one friend looks at another,” Rotherby said, peering over the top of the newspaper.

Within the confines of his chest, Seb’s heart pounded. Was it possible—she felt as he did?

“Everybody gets stars in their eyes when dancing,” he said, his dismissive tone more for his own benefit than Rotherby’s. “Blushing, breathing heavily—all typical for someone when they dance. I don’t study physiology, but I know that much.”

“Except,” his friend pointed out, “she didn’t blush or breathe heavily when she danced with me, and I’m a ruddy, good-looking fellow.”

There was truth to Rotherby’s words. Grace had appeared attentive but not enraptured in her dance with Rotherby. And women always looked at the duke as if he was the treasure of El Dorado, the lost city of Atlantis, and the open gates of Paradise all combined into one.

But Grace was a natural philosopher. Her values operated differently from the majority of the populace. The fact that she had a tendre for Mason Fredericks rather than some dashing rake was proof of that.

“I’m telling you,” Seb said tightly, “she doesn’t think of me in that way. I am merely a means for her to reach her goal.”

Rotherby rolled his eyes. “Even if you’re right—which you aren’t—what about your feelings for her?”

“Immaterial.”

“Oh ho! That means you do have feelings for her.” Rotherby threw the newspaper onto the floor, and an instant later, an assistant cleared it away.

“Senhor Holloway,” Mr. Ruis reprimanded, but Seb couldn’t help it. He had to move.

Seb paced away to busy himself with a stack of fashion prints. He sorted through them, seeing without seeing the images of men in Paris’s latest styles. What a simpler life the prints depicted, liberated of every concern except the need to be handsome. It was no wonder that the fashionable figures existed in a world almost entirely free of place or context. No one there struggled with uncomfortable, unwanted feelings.

“I may—may—find myself thinking of Grace as more than a friend, but I repeat, whatever I feel for her doesn’t matter. She wants Mason Fredericks. I can barely afford to feed and house myself, let alone two people. And I have no expectation that she will repay my years of friendship with her affections. Nothing can or will transpire between us.”

He had to keep reiterating this, as many times as it took.

“That’s a damned pity.” Rotherby sighed. “I’d hoped . . .”

Seb spun to face his friend. “You were late today on purpose.”

“Of course I was.” Rotherby threw up his hands. “Wanted to give you time alone with her.”

Even now, nearly two decades since they’d left Eton, Rotherby still looked out for Seb. He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“It’s appreciated. Truly. But your efforts to form a romantic attachment between Grace and myself are misguided. She and I will remain friends. Only friends.”

“I still hold out hope,” Rotherby said with a wry smile.

Seb patted Rotherby’s shoulder. “This will be the first time in your charmed life that you’ll be disappointed.”