Bobby huffs, pretending at greater exasperation just to see her eyebrows crease. He so loves riling her up. Almost as fun as getting Gwen angry.
“Fine.”
“Oh, thank you!” Beth says brightly, wrapping her arm through his. “God, doesn’t she look beautiful?”
He watches her watch Gwen, her eyes wide, a small smile on her face. Doting, in love, besotted.
Gwen’s not the most graceful of the dancers, but there’s something in the confident way she carries herself—and maybe a little in the way Demeroven is an actually adequate partner. “She does,” he agrees. “And so do you.”
“Oh, don’t bother—Gwen has been laying it on all night.”
“Yes, what a hardship, to be beloved,” he says.
She laughs and squeezes his arm. “Shall we find you someone to sing your praises too?”
Bobby fights a shudder. “No, no, turning Lord Demeroven into the toast of the ton is more than enough of a project this season, I think.”
Beth hums, giving her attention back to the dancers.
It’s not making laws, or making a difference, but shaping Lord Demeroven into a moderately respectable lord issomething, at least.
Chapter Two
James
He closes the heavy front door to the townhouse and rests his forehead against the cool wood. If he never attends another ball in his life, he could die a happy man. Between the politics, the dancing, and the endless stream of mothers and daughters he disappointed with his utter lack of social flair, he’s exhausted.
Dancing with Lady Gwen and his cousin MissBertram wasn’t terrible, but spending the night surrounded by their chatter, with Lady Gwen’s cousins Lord Mason and the younger Mason chiming in, was almost dizzying.
He’s not sure if it’s the hour, the faint buzz of alcohol in his system, or the lighting, but he thinks his mother may have purchased yet another bust. The statues and paintings all seem to meld together in the narrow, tall space of the foyer. It’s oppressive.
But it isn’t as if he tried to stop her. At least it gives her something to focus on, now that she’s here and separated from her friends back home. His stepfather couldn’t wait to get to the city, but he knows his mother took much solace in the community she’d made in Epworth.
She may have purchased herself an entire set of evening ball gowns for the season, but she didn’t even make it out of bed today. Her lady’s maid, Miss Marina, said it was a headache, buthe thinks it’s likely just melancholy. They don’t deal well with change, he and his mother.
His stepfather, on the other hand—
“’S that you, Demeroven?”
James winces, considering making a break for it up the stairs rather than facing the smoke-filled haze that is his stepfather’s study. What should be his study.
But if he doesn’t face the man now, he’ll be banging down his door tomorrow, bright and early, demanding a full report. So James shuffles across the narrow hall and into the study, coughing at the smoke. The man could at least crack a window.
The space is filled with heavy, half-empty bookshelves. His stepfather brought down his own dark, dour chairs to face the enormous desk left behind by the late Viscount Demeroven. The room has a strange, out-of-time feeling, half full, half considered, half his stepfather’s and half a dead man’s. There’s nothing of James in here at all.
His stepfather looks up from yet another financial ledger. Ever since they arrived, he’s been nose-deep in the late viscount’s London accounting, not that he truly knows the first thing about managing an estate. Though neither does James, really.
His stepfather’s beady eyes peer through the haze, his round, ruddy face set in a scowl. “You’re home early,” he grunts.
James bites back the automatic retort that he is a man of age now and needn’t answer to his stepfather any longer. He’s in control of the title now. He’s the new Viscount Demeroven. The reign of his stepfather—the gentleman Mr. Griggs—as regent to the estate is over. James is about to sit in parliament, for God’s sake. This is, in fact, his house now.
But the words never manage to pass his lips. Instead, he shrugs, like an insolent little boy.
His stepfather frowns and takes a swig of the late viscount’s brandy. “Did you meet Lord Henchey?”
James shakes his head. “No. Lord Havenfort introduced me to a fair few, but they were all his lot.”
His stepfather groans. “You let that man walk all over you, didn’t you? I told your mother you didn’t have the backbone for it.”
