Then I see one of the Royal Wreckers—Gilly, the blond guy—sitting on a damask sofa, a girl practically draped over him. She seems to be made of about 80% leg, and nearly 100% of those legs are on display in a short and sparkly minidress.
Gilly looks up as we pass, grinning and raising his glass. “Monters, my good man!” he yells, even though there’s no reason to be loud—this place is nearly as quiet as a library. “Thought you were staying in tonight.”
“I am,” Miles replies, stopping in front of Gilly’s sofa, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Or I was. Just looking for Seb.”
The brunette draped over Gilly sits up, pulling the strap of her dress up one narrow shoulder. “Seb is here?” she asks, and Gilly heaves a sigh.
“You had to mention his name.”
“It’s his club, mate,” Miles replies, then, with a nod at Gilly, he nudges my lower back, propelling me farther into the room.
“This was just a regular house,” Miles tells me as we come to yet another flight of stairs, this one covered in deep-burgundy carpeting and spiraling down into a dim space. Sconces affixed to the wall light our way as we head down. “Seb bought it two years ago because it’s close to this restaurant he likes, La Flamina,” Miles continues, “and he wanted a private space where he could hang with his mates.”
“And girls,” I add, and Miles pauses on the step just below me. His hair is still damp, and it’s curling underneath his ears. I fight an urge to touch one of those light brown curls, but that would be both weird and inappropriate, and this night has enough of that already.
“Yes,” he concedes. “And girls.”
“Upstairs was not exactly a den of iniquity,” I allow, and Miles stops again, several steps below me now. He’s got one hand in his pocket, the other resting lightly on the banister, and for a second, I think he’s going to say something.
Then he just shakes his head and continues down the stairs.
I follow, trying to figure out Isa’s state of mind. It isn’t like her to be reckless, but I have a feeling Seb can override any girl’s senses. And suddenly I’m beating myself up for not saying something to her about how Seb is less Prince Charming and more Prince Garbage Fire, but then we’re walking into an actual den of iniquity, and all thoughts in my head that aren’t a sort of low-level shriek are promptly silenced.
For just a second, it reminds me of the race day. I see the same shiny hair, the same rail-thin figures and tall shoes and expensive dresses. But it’s like the Wonderland version of that day. This time there are no hats, and there is definitely no decorum.
There is, however, a lot of booze.
The entire room reeks of the floral, medicinal hit of gin, and the music is thumping so loudly I can feel it in my chest. Even over that, I can make out voices as people shout to be heard, laugh, and, in the case of one guy standing on the bar, a striped tie wrapped around his head, sing a song completely different than the one currently blasting through the speakers.
It’s like a nightclub, but instead of the dim blue light I’d imagine in an actual club, everything is fairly well lit by the chandeliers overhead.
Somehow that makes it worse.
“Is this, like, some Lord of the Flies thing?” I ask Miles as a blonde in a deep-purple dress throws back her head laughing while also dropping a flaming piece of paper into a highball glass.
I can’t hear Miles sigh, but I see his shoulders rise and fall as he takes in the scene around us.
“This is Seb’s place,” he says, and I nod, moving closer.
“So totally a Lord of the Flies thing, got it. Sucks to your ass-mar!” I call out to the blonde, but she’s still laughing and doesn’t hear me.
Miles does, though, and I think he might actually laugh a little himself as he pulls me deeper into the room.
There aren’t that many people in here—it’s definitely not as packed as a real club would be—but there are enough that I can’t spot Isa or Seb.
“You’re sure they’re here?” I ask Miles, but before he can reply, a redhead has launched herself off a nearby sofa and directly onto him.
“Monnnnnnnteeerrrrrrssss,” she drawls, wobbling on very high, very thin heels. She’s wearing a pair of jeans that probably cost more than our mortgage and one of those blouses Ellie wears a lot that seems to be made of anywhere between three and forty-seven layers of sheer material. Various ruffles of fabric flutter around her as she hugs Miles, then steps back, both hands on his shoulders, peering up into his face.
“You look hotter,” she says, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Did you get hotter?”
I don’t want to scoff, but it’s hard not to. Miles is traditionally handsome and all that, but hot? No, hot is reserved for boys who don’t own shoe trees, sorry, but—
“Sitting for my Higher in hotness this year,” Miles says to the girl now, one corner of his mouth lifted in something between a smirk and a grin. “Glad to see all the revising I’ve been doing has paid off.”
I stand there, feeling like someone just punched me in the chest. Miles is very much not hot, but that thing he just did? That flirty, witty . . . whatever that was?
That was kind of hot, which means this is clearly not just a secret club but actually a parallel universe where Miles Montgomery is a guy who girls would be into.
“Ooh-er,” the girl says, which is either some kind of nonsense word or possibly posh people code. Then she squeezes his shoulders again and looks over at me.
Her eyes widen a little, and I see that, like the girls at the race, she’s both beautiful and not all beautiful at the same time. Like money and centuries of power have put a gloss over her ordinary features.
“You’re Eleanor’s sister,” she says, then glances back at Miles before giving him a grin and slapping at his shoulder. “Monters, you prat. Does Flora know?”
Flora? She has to mean Princess Flora, Seb’s twin sister, but why would Flora care about Miles?
Glancing over at me, Miles ignores that and says, “Missy, Daisy and I are looking for Seb. Have you seen him?”
She blinks at me, then looks back to Miles, shifting her weight to one foot so quickly that I’m a little worried she’ll topple right over.
“Yar,” she says, because apparently she can only speak in that posh people code, or maybe she’s actually a pirate. “With a girl, natch. Pretty one, too. He’s by the bar.”
Miles winks at her—Winks! What is even happening?!—with a “Cheers,” then gently steers me away and toward the back of the room.
“Lady Melissa Dreyfuss, known as Missy,” he says in a low voice as we steer our way around a guy in a pink polo shirt kissing a girl who must be six inches taller than him. “Youngest daughter of the Duke of Drummond. The duke went missing about ten years ago after he tried to murder one of their stable grooms, so that’s a bit of a scandal, obviously. Missy has an uncle who’s trying to have the duke declared dead so that he can take the title, and—Daisy?”