James groans and stuffs half a scone into his mouth to stall.
“Come on, tell me. Is he everything you thought he’d be?” Reginald asks.
James feels himself flush. “Shut up,” he mumbles.
Reginald grins, rubbing his hands together. His dimples make his smile almost irresistible, but James does not want to discuss this. Not when the night felt like such an unmitigated failure.
“All right. How was the dancing?”
James stuffs another scone in his mouth and Reginald laughs.
“Really? Anyone of interest?”
James shrugs. Lady Gwen wasn’t a terrible partner, though she hardly seemed focused on him. Lady Gwen and his cousin, MissBertram, are thick as thieves and seem to be able to communicate with nary a glance between them, always laughing and filling out their Spot-the-Scion cards.
“It was fine,” he says after he gets the scone down. Usually they’re his favorite, but he’s parched from all the dancing and alcohol.
He takes a long drink of milk, closing his eyes to hide from Reginald’s raised eyebrow.
“Fine,” Reginald repeats, waiting him out until he can’t drink any more. “You must have metsomeone.”
“Lord Havenfort introduced me to the lords,” James mumbles, taking another scone simply to crumble it to bits on the plate.
“And?”
“And they were rather boring,” he admits, finally looking up to meet Reginald’s eyes. “A lot of whose wife was where and which daughter was available.”
“Any of those daughters the ones your mother keeps harping on about?”
James sighs. “Plenty.”
“And how many did you dance with?”
“Two?” he guesses. He really wasn’t paying much attention to anyone but his cousin and Lady Gwen. “The rest were friends of my cousin’s, and they’re all already taken.”
Reginald reaches out for his own scone with a frown. “Your mother won’t be happy.”
“I went, didn’t I?”
Reginald gives him a disapproving look. James crushes a bit of scone between his fingers, agitated.
“There’ll be other balls,” he says.
Reginald bobs his head. “Of course, of course.” He takes a bite of his scone and chews thoughtfully. It almost lulls James into a false sense of security. “And Mr.Mason?”
James groans again and drops his head. “Stop it.”
“You’ve got to give me something,” Reginald insists. “All those summers when you were home from Oxford, waxing poetic, and you never even talked to him. Surely,surely, you spoke tonight.”
James squeezes his eyes shut, bracing himself, before looking up to meet Reginald’s rampant curiosity. “He’s fine.”
“Fine?” Reginald huffs. “That’s all I get? My years of loyalty, my sympathy biscuits, my words of wooing wisdom—”
James shushes him, his shoulders going up as he glances back toward the foyer. But all is quiet, which means, for better or worse, no one is coming to save him.
“Tell me you at least plucked up the courage to talk to the man now that you’re tangentially connected.”
James blows out a breath and looks back at Reginald. “We talked.”
