Chapter 10
Sebastian had discovered the answer to his question; what would the Duke look like when he finally relaxed?
Not in a hundred years would Sebastian have guessed that Maurice would babble in a panicked way as if he suddenly had feelings and didn't know what to do with them. Sebastian had no such qualms. He knew his place and there was no point in developing an emotional connection to a Duke. Some things in life were completely impossible, so he wasn’t going to waste his energy on dreaming of them.
He would go back to his cottage—or a room above the stable block—and carry on with his life, but with a stunning memory to keep him warm at night.
Maurice walked through a door at the end of the room, and Sebastian was curious enough to follow.
The room was the size of Sebastian’s lounge but had a tiled floor and in the middle of the room was a large tub.
Various dressers lined the walls with elegant collections of soaps, cloths, and towels.
The only familiar thing in the room was a jug, similar to the one Sebastian used for washing himself.
“Shall I ring for some hot water?” Maurice asked, as if Sebastian needed a reminder of how different their lives were.
“No.” He grabbed a cloth, wet it with the water sitting in a bowl, squeezed it out, and gently wiped Maurice’s chest and stomach. Maurice shivered and Sebastian wanted to laugh.
“Poor Duke. Perhaps you are too soft for cold water?”
Maurice glared at him but squared his shoulders, took the cloth from Sebastian, and washed himself. He didn’t look comfortable but the determination to prove that he wasn’t a useless toff amused and delighted Sebastian.
“Do you only bath in cold water?” Maurice had a horrified expression.
“My cottage has no bath.” Sebastian ignored the way Maurice’s jaw dropped.
“In summer, I swim in the river, and for the rest of year, I boil a cloth and use that to wash.” It worked, and his cottage was small enough that it could be heated by his fire all year around.
It’d been a revelation when he’d arrived at Pewett Downs, adopted by Wildgoose Senior to help with the horses, and he’d been given a warm cloth to wash with.
The Duke Street Orphanage had only given them cold cloths for washing, ostensibly to save money but he wondered sometimes if it wasn’t also designed to punish them for being there.
Bestowing punishment on the children for the sins of their parents, or whatever the English church decided was appropriate.
It was utterly illogical in Sebastian’s view.
He’d escaped, and his friend Rose had married an Earl until her unfortunate death, while his other friends had eventually created good lives for themselves once they’d left.
Earnest would be delighted at knowing Sebastian had been in bed with the Duke, Nobbie would offer caution, and Adam would provide advice on how to use the connection for personal advantage.
“Have you never had a bath?”
“Never.” Sebastian shrugged. It hardly mattered since he was able to stay clean with what life had gifted him.
“Oh my. I assumed you must because you are so clean.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “A bath is not necessary for cleanliness and it is a luxury that most people cannot afford. I’d bet that none of your servants bathe; they don’t have the time.”
“No, I suppose they don’t.” Maurice’s surprise broadened the distance between them. “Let me bathe you.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Not tonight. I’m hungry.
” And he was. It was long past the time he usually ate; besides he could hardly walk away from dinner since all the stable boys knew he was here and all of the staff in the big house did too.
John, the cheekiest of the stable boys, would want to know about the food.
Sebastian quickly washed, then tossed the cloth in the Duke’s direction, and went to get dressed.
Sebastian threw on his clothes and marched down to the room where he’d been shown earlier this afternoon.
Emotions surged in his veins and that in itself annoyed him as he was accustomed to being able to supress the way his heart galloped and his pulse raced.
Horses could read his heart rate and he’d trained himself to keep it calm in all circumstances; except when he fucked a Duke and only got a momentary satisfaction from seeing Maurice finally relaxed.
It’d faded too fast, leaving Sebastian with an odd tilt to his world.
He would never have the incredulous life that Maurice promised—a bath in a big house or a life together—but he did want to see Maurice lose that ducal cloak of tension for longer than the time it took a field of horses to cover six furlongs.
It hadn’t been enough. He wanted it again and again.
He sighed. It couldn’t be and now he had to survive dinner without revealing that Maurice’s dreams were fruitless.
He had enough letters from Earnest about life in London to know that these types of flings were temporary.
Earnest, along with Adam and Nobbie from the orphanage, had been his gang growing up, and after he’d been adopted, he still wrote them letters.
“Sebastian. You must be famished. Please sit.”
He sat in the chair that Maurice indicated. “Thank you, your Grace.”
“Please. We can’t stand on ceremony now.”
“To the contrary, we must. This has been a most extraordinary night, and tomorrow I will still have four zebras to train and a horse stud to run.” Sebastian should write to Earnest about this adventure. Earnest would enjoy the antics of Wibble, Dungeon, Bob, and Stripes.
“Was it horses that had you lost in thought?”
It would be so simple to say yes, but Sebastian wasn’t about to lie to a Duke, or to his ... lover? Friend? Before today, Sebastian had known he occupied an unusual space in the Duke’s life, as a respected member of staff whose opinion was valued. Did that make them friends?
“I was thinking of writing to a friend in London for some advice.”
“About?”
Sebastian bit back a growl. “Maurice, don’t be obtuse. About this situation.”
“You’ll be careful?”
“Naturally. My friend has some experience of these types of matters.”
Maurice’s eyebrows shot up. “You have a friend who has a—” Maurice waved his hands in the air.
“Yes, Earnest has had many a tryst with your peers, Lords and Ladies. He’s somewhat of an expert.”
“And you thought to get some advice from a ... courtesan?”
Sebastian chuckled softly. “Gosh, don’t beat around the bush, Maurice.
And no, Earnest isn’t a courtesan. He is more a connoisseur.
” If Earnest could get paid for his trysts, he’d probably accept, given that he was a poet with uncertain income, but he was too busy chasing love for any common sense arrangements.
“I do not understand.”
The odd thing about this was that it was usually Sebastian who gave Earnest advice.
Earnest tended to fall in love easily, and often wrote to Sebastian about his heartbreak, with Sebastian writing letters filled with sensible advice in return.
By the time his letters arrived, Earnest had fallen in love again.
“There’s not much to understand.” But it was difficult to explain how being an orphan impacted on the way that all four of them found love.
Earnest chased that first blush of lust, confusing attention with love.
Sebastian poured his heart into his horses.
Adam and Nobbie had founded a little business working with those in the aristocracy who needed to disappear or have their reputations wounded.
It was inspired by their friend Rose who’d needed an escape and hadn’t found one.
Rent a Rake, they nicknamed it. Rent a Rake.
The name was mostly Earnest’s idea, because of course it was, and it was Nobbie and Adam who’d had the ability to make the business pay.
If a woman was to be married to someone she despised, they would organise a faux-tryst to ‘ruin’ her, thus helping her avoid the marriage.
She’d pay them to rescue her, with Nobbie using his financial skills to teach her how to spirit away money from her pin-money and jewels for her future, and of course, keeping a portion for Adam and Nobbie’s business.
Adam had elegant charm and Earnest was society’s chaotic darling.
“This friend of yours? I assume he’s not a Lord since there are no titles of Earnest, so who is he?”
Lord Earnest? Sebastian shook his head. “It’s a big assumption to think a friend of mine might be a Lord. Earnest was an orphan with me at Duke Street.”
“And yet he routinely spends time with the ton and isn’t a courtesan?” Maurice was hung up on placing Earnest in the correct class, and it wasn’t very fun. Sebastian hardly needed the reminder that he wasn’t in the same class as the Duke.
“You have probably heard of him. Sir Earnest Pashley.”
“The poet.” Maurice’s eyebrows were doing a lot of work tonight.
“Yes. Is it so hard to countenance that I might be friends with a poet?”
Maurice blinked, before schooling his face into that expressionless visage that Sebastian saw so often. He realised how infrequently Maurice did that around him, and maybe that was an important detail that he should ... No, that was better off not being thought of.
“Pashley? Wasn’t he in the newssheets for camping on the Earl of Horden’s lawn for a month?”
“I’m sure that rumour is vastly exaggerated.” It had been only a few days before Adam had hauled the heartbroken Earnest to his rooms. Earnest had written some sorrowful poetry, and Nobbie’s letter about the incident had been rather amusing.
“Somehow I imagined your friends to be less dramatic.” Maurice appeared quite bothered by this.
“And I have never imagined you have any friends.” Sebastian immediately regretted the mean retort as Maurice struggled to hide his hurt reaction.
Maurice dabbed his mouth with his napkin.
After a silence that dragged on, leaving Sebastian to fidget with his own napkin, Maurice finally made an audible breath.
“It is true that forming genuine friendships is difficult in my position. People tend to see the title and what it can do for them, rather than the man holding it.”
Oh ... Sebastian hadn’t intended this conversation to get so serious. His damned heart was going to get involved if this kept going, so he pushed Maurice away in the only way that he could.
“Imagine being an orphan. Unseen and unwanted by everyone.” Sebastian kept his gaze steady on Maurice’s face. Neither of them backed down. Sebastian shouldn’t find the intensity so damned hot, or could he allow himself to enjoy it? No. Down that road lay misery.