“Demeroven? Thought I’d heard you were here,” he says, as if everything is perfectly normal. As if it’s completely fine that they’re both here, and they both know, and—
“I have to go,” James mumbles through clenched teeth. He heads for the stairs but trips, groping wildly for the banister only for Mason to catch him.
“Easy, man,” Mason says, wrapping his arm around James’ back, his grip tight, but nothing like Raverson’s. “Let’s go out, get some air, yeah?”
James can only nod, feeling like his heart is about to burst out of his chest. His limbs are tingling again, those pinpricks back in his fingertips. But he doesn’t think he can fight it off this time. His nerves are going to get the better of him. He just needs to make it outside.
Mason waves to the doorman, who opens the door with a muttered, “Careful, yeah?”
And then they’re in the cool night air. James gulps it in, pulling away from Mason to stumble down the two-step stoop and into the alley. He just manages to catch himself on the wall, bracing with both hands as he loses the fight with his stomach.
He vomits up whisky and bile, his back shaking, fingers digging into the rough stone wall. He wishes he could vomit up hispast with Raverson, and his fear of being seen, being known, being judged. Wishes his fear would seep into the cobblestones like his sick, and leave him indomitable, instead of this hunched, terrified husk.
“All right?” Mason asks, laying a warm, heavy palm on James’ back as he braces himself on the wall, sucking in air around the burn in his throat.
James jerks, Mason’s touch as comforting as it is mortifying. Not only does Bobby Mason now have proof that James fancies men, but he’s also seen him in an uncontrolled panic, rushing out of what is supposed to be an upstanding, safe, exclusive club.
He’s seeing him too weak. He’s seeing too much.
“Here,” Mason says. He extends a handkerchief to him and James stares down at it, white and covered with little daisies. Dainty, for a solid man like Mason. “There’s another pub down the way—we could get you some water... or bread, maybe?”
Mason’s kindness and soft words burrow against a dark part of him that squirms in horror.
“I’m fine,” James rasps, forcing himself upright before he’s ready.
He steps back, glancing at Mason, who stands there, handkerchief outstretched, looking too concerned, and too handsome, and too... everything.
He can’t do this.
It was a far-fetched fantasy—that he’d meet a nice man who understood him, who could know him, who could love him as he is. There is no fairy tale for him in London. Just the prying eyes of the ton, and the lords, and his past, running after him as he tries to stay one step ahead.
“I have to go,” he says, lurching around Mason to make for the street.
“You can hardly walk in your—”
“I’m perfectly fine,” James repeats, turning to stare just past Mason’s ear. It’s easier to lie, he’s found, if you never meet their eyes, but make them think you have. “I simply have too many important things to do than to waste my time here. Excuse me,” he says, shocked by his own poise and pompous arrogance.
He turns on his heel and walks as steadily as he can toward the street. He’s left with a heavy feeling as he stumbles back toward his carriage, waiting half a mile away. That life full of love he daydreamed about in Epworth—how can it ever exist when London is just a bigger, darker, wider repetition of his past?
Chapter Five
Bobby
Bobby bows to the porter at the Steton townhouse and heads around the side of the four-story, white-brick façade that’s always covered with immaculate ivy and flowers. Perhaps he should take up gardening, make the yard of their rather modest townhouse into something visually resplendent like the Steton backyard, full to bursting with early flowering trees and bushes. Tables have been laid out throughout the shockingly green lawn. And at the back, multiple badminton courts have been set up to provide the entertainment.
Bobby sighs. There probably aren’t funds for new landscaping, not if they’re going to refurbish the carriage and consider throwing their own events if Meredith is ever well enough to join them in London. But it would be nice to have something lovely for her to come home to if she does. And maybe he could actually get Albie out from under all his piles of papers and into the sun if they had a nice back garden.
Bobby shakes himself. He can’t spend the whole afternoon brooding about his brother; otherwise Lady Steton, already roving about the party in a beautiful and very wide floral gown, will find him and start trying to connect him with her young female relatives. He needs a distraction, and fast.
He spots Beth and Gwen beneath the pink flowering tree by the badminton courts and immediately heads their way. Heonly hesitates when he notices Demeroven standing on Gwen’s other side, as if he might like to disappear directly into the tree trunk.
That image of Demeroven heaving onto the cobblestones fills Bobby’s mind again. He remembers how nerve-wracking his own first visit to D’Vere was. If Cunningham hadn’t escorted him, Bobby’s not sure he would have worked up the gumption to knock. And even then, he spent the whole night sweating through his brand-new frock coat.
The thought of marching up to the club door alone for the first time seems excruciating. Bobby can’t blame the man for succumbing to his nerves, nor his anxious, slightly rude behavior afterward. He watches Demeroven shift by the tree now, looking as out of place at the garden party as he seemed at the end of the night at D’Vere.
Bobby feels a renewed sense of purpose bubbling up inside him. The chap’s rather moody, but Beth and Uncle Dashiell asked him to help. Bobby’s sure it isn’t what they intended, but helping Demeroven fit in with London’s underground—helping him find his place and happiness in the community—that feels like a worthy use of his time.
Perhaps if the other half of Demeroven’s life gets sorted, Demeroven will be better able to focus on his duties in parliament, and hopefully on making amends with Aunt Cordelia and Beth. Bobby assumes Demeroven wasn’t personally responsible for Aunt Cordelia and Beth being kicked out of their home when he came of age, or surely Uncle Dashiell wouldn’t be working with him. But someone has to apologize for their abrupt eviction, and worse, for Beth’s forced almost-marriage into the terrible Ashmond family as a result.
