Seb frowned. “I don’t know anything about women’s coiffures or bonnet trimmings. Is it relevant? Unless,” he added, “you want me to dress Grace’s hair. Which also seems immaterial to our objectives.”
“I mean reins,” Rotherby said, looking on the verge of kicking his chair apart. “I’ll put it plainly—can you drive a phaeton or any other sporting vehicle?”
The final droplets of Seb’s exultation leaked away, and he found himself longing for the comfortable, safe world of books. “I can’t afford anything like that. Been some time since I’ve driven, so I’m a bit rusty.”
“Let’s pray you’ll pick it up again quickly.” Rotherby jabbed a finger at him. “Come to my home tomorrow. We’ll make you a dab hand before Friday.”
Grace blinked. “I’m sorry—what happens on Friday?”
It was a relief to know that Seb wasn’t alone in his confusion, but, then, Rotherby always did things according to his own satisfaction and without discussion, leaving everyone else to catch up.
“Wear a pretty new frock and bonnet,” Rotherby said, rising to his feet, “because Holloway here is taking you for a drive.”
“Oh, this is unusual,” Grace’s mother said as she took a seat in the drawing room.
“What is?” Grace looked up from the volume on the reproductive habits of reptilia from Asia. It was a decent enough book, and a subject worthy of study, but she’d barely read any of the printed words.
It was Friday. The day she and Sebastian were to go out driving. Though it was thoroughly planned and discussed, her anticipation and nervousness had built all week.
They’d parted company at McKinnon’s as friends, yet today he’d be his other self. The self she didn’t quite know how to navigate.
“Whenever it’s time for morning callers,” her mother said, “you are conspicuously absent.”
“As are you,” Grace said.
“I felt like spending the afternoon in my drawing room,” was the airy reply.
“Ab absurdo.” Grace pretended to return to her reading, yet inside, she was aflutter. There had been little opportunity to communicate with Sebastian since they’d parted company at McKinnon’s, and there was something about seeing him now that made her restless and apprehensive, as if he wasn’t the Sebastian she’d known for so long.
But he wasn’t the Sebastian she’d known, he was someone else. The same, and yet very, very different.
For one thing, she knew what it felt like to kiss him.
Don’t think about that. It didn’t happen.
Yet it had happened, and no amount of stern lectures to herself seemed to cure her of her fixation with his mouth.
Just read. It was what she did best. As she tried to make sense of the printed words in front of her, a footman came in with a tray bearing a card, which he brought to Grace’s mother.
A small smile of triumph lit her mother’s face. “He’s here.”
Grace’s stomach clenched. She was nearly as nervous as she’d been at the Creasys’ garden party.
“Show him in,” her mother told the footman.
The servant bowed before retreating. The moment he left the room, Grace’s mother fluttered her hands at Grace. “Go stand by the window. The light there is exceedingly complimentary.”
Grace almost snapped that she would do no such thing. But she needed to give people the impression that Sebastian’s attention was welcome. Which it was, although not in the way that everyone believed.
She got to her feet and moved to the window, conscious of how the light filtered through the curtains to touch her hair and the curve of her neck. Yet her thoughts blurred—was she preparing for Sebastian’s arrival for the benefit of her mother, or was she displaying herself to truly garner Sebastian’s admiration?
She couldn’t tell. And that uncertainty disconcerted her.
“Mr. Sebastian Holloway,” the footman said from the doorway.
The servant stood alone for a moment, and Grace thought she saw Sebastian standing off to one side in the corridor, as though preparing himself to enter the room. And then a thrum of excitement pulsed within her as he strolled into the drawing room, wearing the same smile he’d worn at the garden party—as if he was in his favorite spot, with his favorite people. Today, he wore a burgundy coat and cream-colored waistcoat, and his boots were polished as glass. Under his arm, he carried a tall-crowned hat. He held it perfectly as he swept into a bow.