“I’m not,” he assured her, his smile and the look in his eyes conveying his sincerity. “It takes a lot to write a novel. Thepassion to commit to such a thing. I would very much like to hear how you became an author, in fact. If you would tell me…”
She looked at him curiously, searching for the ruse, certain he was trying to trick her somehow. But it was so clear that he was in earnest. That he was, in fact, impressed.
And for that reason, Helena found herself talking. And once she started, she could not stop.
“… that is when the love story begins,” she was saying. “Which is absurd, of course, as she is pretending to be a duke, so she must romance a lady of the ton.”
“Ridiculous,” Sebastian laughed deeply. “But clever. And what does the lady he romances think about her suitor being a woman?”
“She does not know, of course,” she scoffed. “That is the entire idea! Really, it’s not until a terrible accident wipes out the next in line for the throne, leaving her as the apparent heir, that things take a turn.”
“Let me guess, she plots to murder the king so she can sit on the throne.”
“Of course not!”
“Well, she should. By the sounds of it, she might do a better job.” He laughed again, and she laughed along, thrilled by his reaction to the story. “She can’t do any worse.”
“But that is the entire idea,” she explained excitedly, letting the thrill take over. “All her life, she has been treated as less because she is a woman. And now that she might be a king, and all because she wears pants instead of a dress…” She shrugged. “It says a lot about my feelings concerning the male half of the ton.”
“It says a lot about the author,” he countered. “And what she thinks of herself.”
She scoffed. “It is only fiction.”
“There is always truth in fiction.” He was smirking at her, his eyes glimmering in the candlelight. “Does my wife think she is smarter than I? More capable and cunning?”
She fixed him with a coy look, an eyebrow raised, a cheeky glint in her eyes. “I don’t think anything. I know it for a fact.”
As she expected, he burst into laughter. And it was genuine, just as it sounded good to her ears.
The food had long since been finished, but neither seemed to notice. So lost in their conversation, how effortless and easy it was, that Helena felt they could have sat there all night. And that she wanted to.
It might have been annoying. She might have sighed with regret, realizing that she was not so eager to be done with her husband as she had claimed. That was what she thought she felt growing between them was very real and not nearly as fake as she had once believed.
But as things stood, that wasn’t how she felt.
She held Sebastian’s eyes across the table. She smiled, and he returned it. They held that stare, the silence building, no tension because they were past such things.
For all her assurances that he felt nothing for her at all, she could see in the way he looked at her that it wasn’t remotely close to the truth.
He does feel something for me. It is not an act or a lie. What that is… as things stand, I want to find out. How very strange.
Helena was about to ask if he wanted a drink, feeling that she had earned one and that she did not want this night to end. Only then, very suddenly, he pushed back his chair and stood.
“You’re leaving?” she blurted.
“What gave it away?” He grinned. She looked at him flatly, and he sighed. “I am afraid that duty calls in London. I was going to tell you, but…” He shrugged. “I did not think you would care.”
“And I don’t,” she said quickly, a lie as great as any she had ever told.
She studied him for a moment, her pulse racing, her stomach flipping with the thrill of tonight and how well things had gone. There were times when she did not care where he was going. He was free to do as he pleased, just as she was. But times were quickly changing.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “I wish to know.”
He frowned and tilted his head. “Do you, now?”
“Is that a problem? Unless it is a secret?” she scoffed derisively, trying her best to feign disinterest. “Do not tell me that you…” She swallowed past a lump in her throat when a thought came to mind. “That you have some secret love you do not wish for me to find out about.”
“Would that be a problem?”
