He’ll make that his next goal, he decides, before pasting on a smile as he reaches Gwen and Beth.
“You’re being rather petty, don’t you think?” Beth asks Gwen before Bobby can get a word in edgewise.
“Petty?” Gwen repeats, her face darkening. “That’s rich, given you’re acting as if there’s nothing the matter at all.”
“There isn’t!” Beth returns, hands on her hips, rustling the skirts of her green dress. Bobby thinks it may be one of Gwen’s, actually. “It isn’t her fault that I jilted her son. She has money she wants to donate, and time to fill, just like us.”
“And you have no qualms about buddying up to her? What, are you looking for information on Montson?”
Bobby would try to mediate, like Albie’s always able to do, but he doesn’t want either of their furies turned on him instead. So he slips around them to lean back against the tree beside Demeroven, more than close enough to keep listening.
“Have they been at this long?” he asks Demeroven.
“Are you seriously asking me if I have some kind of latent interest in Lord Montson?” Beth demands.
“About fifteen minutes,” Demeroven replies without looking at Bobby.
He’s staring up into the tree and Bobby follows his gaze, tracking a squirrel sitting above them. He wonders if it too is interested in Beth and Gwen’s fight about Lady Ashmond. It sounds as if perhaps she’s funding refurbishments at the Foundling Hospital where the girls have just started volunteering.
“I think you have some kind of interest in Lady Ashmond,” Gwen snipes back.
“I do!” Beth exclaims.
Gwen huffs and goes to stalk away, but Beth clutches at Gwen’s arm. She pulls Gwen in close, exchanging a heated glance that’s palpably intimate.
“I’d like to make sure Lady Ashmond is all right. Is that so wrong?”
Gwen sighs and pulls Beth around the tree, removing their argument from earshot. Bobby hopes they’ll make up. He does so enjoy their more ridiculous fights, but he knows Montson and the entire engagement from last season remains a sore subject between them. How could it not?
With them bickering on the other side of the tree, Bobby’s left beside Demeroven, all the awkwardness of their night in the alleyway pulsing between them. He glances down at the man and finds him almost breaking his neck to avoid eye contact, staring off and up in the other direction. Bobby looks up into the branches, but the nosy squirrel has deserted them.
“Bet it’s having a better time,” Bobby mutters.
“What?” Demeroven asks.
Bobby winces. “Um, the squirrel. I bet—” God, this is silly. “I bet it’s having a better time than we are.”
“Too right,” Demeroven says, staring up into the leaves with him. “Nothing to do but eat nuts and sleep, what a life.”
Bobby laughs, startled, and looks down at Demeroven. Demeroven himself seems a little surprised, but there’s a tug at his lips and his shoulders have come down, so that’s progress.
“Think he likes one particular type, or prefers to diversify?” Bobby asks before he can stop himself.
“If it’s all you can eat, why not a sample?” Demeroven wonders, glancing up to meet Bobby’s eyes.
Bobby watches his cheeks go pink before he looks away again. Adorable, really. Bobby waits, wondering if Demeroven might make another joke, but Demeroven doesn’t offer anything else and they stand in a growing awkward silence.
“Have you been making morning calls?” Bobby asks. Banal, but it will have to do.
“No,” Demeroven says, shrugging. “My mother’s made a few, I think.”
“Right, right. Mother’s prerogative,” Bobby agrees, ignoring the pang in his chest. He doesn’t know if that’s a mother’s prerogative, actually, having never gotten to see his mother attend the season. “Parliament starts early too.”
“It does,” Demeroven agrees. “Bloody early. Makes me miss lying in at Oxford.”
“How did you ever lie in at Oxford if you were on the rowing team?” Bobby wonders.
Demeroven glances over at him, a brief look of mischief on his face. “I had my ways.”
