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He had to do right by Grace. He had to become the rake she needed. For her sake, and his own. No room for failure. No room for failure.
That refrain chased itself in circles in his mind whenever he startled into wakefulness.
He’d had better nights.
Fortunately, his landlady forgot to heat his bath, so he managed to startle himself awake with icy water the next morning. As he bathed, he attempted to distract himself from fretful brooding by singing a taproom melody. When he finished the last refrain, his downstairs neighbor yelled, “Bravo! Now do ‘A Lusty Young Smith’!”
By the time Seb reached the final jingle bang, jingle, hi ho! his spirits were much improved. There was something in a tune about a blacksmith and a buxom young maiden rogering each other six times in a row that cheered up a fellow.
His elevated mood came crashing down as he approached Grace’s Mayfair home that afternoon. Never before had he been to the imposingly large house, and as he stood in its shadow, a cold feeling coagulated in his stomach.
God. They came from such vastly different worlds. Oh, his father had built himself a grand home with no fewer than six bedchambers in St. John’s Wood, but that house was less than half a decade old whilst the London residence of the Earl of Pembroke surely predated that by at least fifty years—and that was only its most recent iteration. Morbid curiosity had once made Seb look up Grace’s family’s entry in Debrett’s to discover that the earldom originated during the war between the Yorks and the Lancasters.
Now he walked up the steps leading to the Earl of Pembroke’s sprawling yet refined home and two words echoed in his head.
Fuck. Me.
His classmates at Eton had come from old power and wealth, but he’d never had to walk into their homes and pretend as though the sight of a literal coat of arms on the door knocker didn’t shake him to his nouveau riche core.
He raised his hand to use the door knocker, drawing a steadying breath. The fact that a person happened to be born to a particular family and was the by-product of generations of selective propagation didn’t make anyone better than anyone else. If anything, aristocrats seemed determined to breed away health and vitality.
If peers wanted to make themselves less viable and more irrelevant, they were doing a bang-up job.
The door swung open before he could knock, revealing Grace. She smiled at him—was there a hint of relief in her smile, as though she’d feared he wouldn’t come?—and he forgot all his high-handed thoughts about the titled and elite.
“Come in, come in.” She waved for him to step into the foyer. “I don’t usually answer the door, but I’m trying to keep your presence here known to as few as possible, and I’ve only so much pin money to bribe the servants. My father left this morning and my mother’s out, so other than the servants, we’re on our own.”
Dazed, he entered her home. The foyer was large enough to host a good-sized assembly, complete with dancing. “It’s taking me considerable effort to keep from trying out the acoustics in here.”
“Charlie and I used to stand at different ends of the foyer and whisper naughty words to test if the other person could hear them.”
Unable to stop himself, Seb walked to the farthest point in the vestibule. “Give it a go now.”
She raised her brow, then brought her cupped hands to her mouth. “Bum.”
Her whisper resonated close enough as if he could feel her breath softly against his ear. He started as a stroke of heat licked up his spine.
What the devil?
Seb shook himself. This was merely an amusing diversion with a friend, nothing more. He could play this game without finding himself mired in unexpected desire.
“That hardly qualifies as a naughty word.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“Suddenly you’re Dr. Johnson,” she said irritably. But she whispered into her hands again. “Arse.”
Damn and hell. It happened again, that same caress of arousal that rose up from hearing her speak mildly profane terms. It had to be the novelty of hearing a lady of gentle birth—and his friend—utter coarse words.
Nonetheless . . . He’d have to think about this later, hearing Grace swear. Delightful was too mild a term for it.
