Bobby lets the door to the women’s water closet swing shut behind him and rummages in his pocket for his handkerchief, but comes up empty. “And leave you in here to cry alone?”
Beth rolls her watery eyes, blowing out a breath to try and calm down. Bobby plunks himself down on one of the overstuffed poufs that are, for some reason, just in the middle of the room. There’s much more to the outer chamber here than there is in the men’s water closet.
The walls are a deep pink and made of what looks like crushed velvet. There’s gold-tassel trim along the molding, and the wash basins are set beneath a row of mirrors lit with gaslights. The whole room is a tad hazy, but inviting.
“It’s all right to be mad, you know,” Bobby says, watching as Beth tries to shake her tears away, flapping the towel in her hand.
“I don’t want to give him the satisfaction,” Beth says tightly. She then raises the towel and blows her nose with a sound like a foghorn.
“Then give me the satisfaction of listening to you rail against him, and we’ll go out and be all prim, proper, and disgustingly stiff-upper-lip about it,” Bobby entices.
If she keeps bottling it all up inside, someday she’ll explode, and he doesn’t want to see her hurt, or see her have to live with having hurt someone else. On top of that, he needs to hear that it’s hurt her too, otherwise he’ll feel irrational and oversensitive. James bloody Demeroven is an unmitigated, pompous arse.
“I would be angrier if he wasn’t right,” Beth says, meeting his eyes with a look of such exhaustion that he instantly rises from the pouf to wrap her in a hug.
Beth presses her forehead into his shoulder with a huff and he stares at their reflection in the mirror.
“Are you angry?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says instantly.
“But?”
Bobby sighs. She’s not wrong. Demeroven’s comment bites not simply because it was a wretched thing to say, but more because it’s annoyingly true. His and Beth’s fathers were lazy, thoughtless men, who threw their money at everything but their families, and ascribed to the most power-hungry, self-serving of politics.
And they both treated their children like utter filth.
Still. “He shouldn’t have said anything,” Bobby asserts.
“Bobby.”
“Especially to a lady.”
“I’m not a lady,” Beth says, pulling back to look up at him.
“Sure you are. Best lady I know,” he says, releasing her to wipe away her tears. “And even if the arse is entirely right, and Albie’s done more for my family since my father died than my father managed in two decades, and he’s managing even with Meredith trapped away in the country, it’s still wrong for your cousin to treat you that way.”
“It’s wrong for him to treat us both that way,” Beth agrees, squeezing his hands before stepping back from him.
He watches as she shuffles close to the mirror to tend to her lightly melted makeup. “You’re right,” he says. “And I’m sorry you have to deal with him so much.”
Beth turns to regard him, lip between her teeth. “I wish I was only angry at him.”
Bobby blinks. He lowers himself down to the overstuffed pouf again, settling in for a good talk. As much as he knows Beth loves Gwen and Uncle Dashiell, the circumstances of her arrangement must make it difficult to talk about the time before—those awful months when Beth was set to marry Lord Montson so she and Cordelia would have somewhere to live.
“I find I’m angrier with my father than I... thought I was,” Beth admits.
“Me too,” Bobby hears himself say.
“Watching James take his seat, I—I didn’t think it would be this hard. His attitude notwithstanding.”
“He’s certainly not making it easier,” Bobby agrees.
“And I’m happy, you know?” Beth says, her smile brittle, but clear. “So happy with Gwen. And my mother and Dashiell are so in love, and the baby—” She breaks off to swipe at her eyes again. “Damn.”
“I feel kind of helpless,” Bobby says, offering her a sad smile, hoping that somehow baring his own broken soul might make her feel less guilty for her completely understandable emotional upheaval.
“You do?” Beth wonders.
