Which, I realize, means finding Seb.
The palace is a confusing warren of halls and rooms, smaller than Sherbourne Castle, plus there’s the added issue of parts of it being open to tourists and other parts private and for family only.
I know I’m technically “family” now, but I still feel funny creeping the halls of the palace, ducking in rooms, looking for Seb and my best friend. My best friend, whose rights to that title might be stripped if she doesn’t turn up soon.
It’s actually kind of a relief when I run into Spiffy—or Dons (I still have trouble telling them apart)—on one of the staircases.
“Hey . . . you!” I say, trying to seem normal and not at all freaked out. Spiffy-or-Dons stops, grinning at me, hands in his pockets. He’s dressed like a banker in his forties—polo shirt, khakis, shiny shoes—rather than a teenage boy, and I wonder if Miles is the only one of them who ever manages to look semi-normal.
“Lady Daze,” Spiffy-or-Dons says, and, great, apparently I have a nickname, too. How does anyone know who people are talking about around here? “Getting the lay of the land?”
“Kind of,” I reply, resting my hand on the banister. “You haven’t seen Seb, have you? Possibly with a girl?”
It’s the strangest thing, but I can actually see Spiffy-or-Dons shut down. Like a door closing in his face or something.
“Can’t say I have,” he replies, and I know he’s lying.
I press harder. “It’s just my friend Isabel might be with him, and we had plans for tonight. With her parents.”
That part is a lie—Isa’s parents are still in London, coming up tomorrow afternoon—but I’m hoping that invoking parental authority will rattle him a bit.
Doesn’t work.
He shakes his head again and gives me the fakest apologetic look I’ve ever seen. “Maybe she went back to the hotel,” he suggests.
I smile at him. Or grit my teeth, more likely. “Maybe,” I say, but I am pretty sure that’s not the case. Where could Seb have taken her?
And then I realize who might know.
And who would have a vested interest in preventing any scandal involving Seb.
“Is Miles around?” I ask.
Spiffy-or-Dons grins. “Thought something might be afoot there,” he says, then literally nudges me in the ribs with his elbow and winks.
I shake my head. “Ew, no.”
Spiffy—it is Spiffy, I’m pretty sure now—rocks back on his heels, face falling. “Ew?” he echoes. “Monters is really the least ew of all of us, I feel.”
I smile in spite of myself at that but reach out and grab his forearm. “Spiffy. Focus. Where is Miles?”
It turns out Miles has a flat—his own, which is crazy to me—not far from the palace, and within a few minutes, I’m in the back of one of the palace’s fleet of cars, heading for the part of Edinburgh called “New Town.” The fact that it was built in the eighteenth century is apparently enough to make it “new” around here.
“Should I wait here, miss?” the driver asks, and I nod, barely thinking about how weird it is to have a driver, to have him waiting for me.
I guess you get used to those things pretty quickly.
Miles’s door is painted deep blue, and there’s no buzzer, so I just knock, hoping he’ll be home and that he might know where Seb has taken Isa.
And sure enough, after just a few seconds, I hear footsteps coming, and then Miles is there, back in his regular uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, clearly puzzled to find me on his doorstep.
“I need a list of every den of iniquity in the city of Edinburgh,” I blurt out.
Miles stares at me for a moment before blinking owlishly. “I . . . don’t have a list like that?” He thinks for a second, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “Although I really wish I did now.”
I roll my eyes, and he ushers me in. It’s unsurprisingly adult and stuffy. Heavy leather furniture, lots of wood, books. There are two pairs of shoes lined up just inside the front door, and as I look at them, I realize they both have cedar shoe trees inside them.
Shoe trees. What teenage boy even knows what those are, much less uses them?
But then I remember I’m here on a mission, and I don’t have time to marvel at how Miles might be a time traveler from 1812. Instead, I follow him into the living room and, as quickly as I can, tell him about what happened back at the bookstore, then the palace. By the time I’m done, Miles has his arms folded over his chest, his brow creased. “Okay, so your friend is visiting from America, and her boyfriend just chucked her.”
“If ‘chucked’ means ‘dumped,’ then yes, that’s what happened,” I say, leaning on the arm of his couch, and dear god. How did they even make leather that soft? I refrain from stroking the couch while Miles turns to walk back toward the bar separating the living room from the kitchen. “And now your friend is out with Seb—where, by your own admission, she wants to be—and you want us to go . . . rescue her?” He picks up a bottle of water, twisting off the cap and frowning at me. “From what exactly?”
I throw my hands up. “From Seb, obviously. Isn’t that your whole deal?”
He’s still looking at me, fiddling with the water bottle.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m just not clear on why she needs rescuing if she’s with Seb by choice. Look, he can be a complete tosser, I know.” He blows out a long breath. “Trust me, I know. But . . . Seb doesn’t exactly have to kidnap women. Young ladies who choose to spend an evening with him do so quite willingly.”
I stare at him. “Okay, what?”
“What?” he replies, but his eyes slide away from mine.
“Don’t what my what,” I tell him, crossing one foot in front of the other. “I what-ed first, and you know what I was what-ing about.”
Miles does that pressed-lips thing again, and when he doesn’t answer, I go on. “You freaked the freak out about me with Seb, but now that I tell you my friend is off with him, you’re all, ‘Oh, no big, that’s just Seb’?” I stare him down. “That’s what I’m what-ing.”
Miles waves his hands, one still wrapped around his bottle of water. “It was different,” he says, and I tilt my head.
“Because it was me,” I say. “Because . . . of Ellie? Of me personally?”
“Because of a lot of things,” he says, but then, before I can get to the bottom of that, he adds, “The point is, I don’t understand why your friend needs rescuing unless you think Seb kidnapped her, which would be a bit much, even for him.”
Frustrated, I shake my head. “No, she totally went with him willingly, it’s not that, it’s just . . . she’s not making good choices, and as her friend, it’s my job to save her from those bad choices if I can.” I fix Miles with a look. “Something tells me you of all people can understand that.”
Miles heaves a sigh, his chest expanding in . . . interesting ways underneath his black T-shirt. Ugh, why did I have to notice that? I don’t like Miles being filed under “boy” in my head, I really don’t.
“Oh god, you had to invoke the squire’s code,” he says, and I frown.
“The what?”
“Squire’s code. When our knights go errant, we must go fetch them.”
“Is that a real thing, or are you being a jackass?”
“I’m being a jackass,” he agrees easily, turning to get his jacket from where it’s draped over a nearby barstool. “But I’m a jackass who’s going to help you.”
Chapter 21
We take the car I’d used a little deeper into the city, the driver eventually pulling over at a series of tall houses, not unlike where Miles lives. We get out of the car, and the house Miles leads me to doesn’t look any different from any of the other houses lining the street. They’re all the same, tall, narrow buildings made of white stone, a black wrought iron fence with sharp points standing guard
between them and the plebes on the sidewalk.
Miles walks to one of the buildings right in the middle, but instead of walking up the wide marble stairs to the blue front door, he turns, jogging down a set of steps I hadn’t even noticed.
The little alcove at the bottom is so small that the two of us can barely fit, standing there so close that Miles has to move one arm around my waist just to keep us from squishing in like sardines.
“Can you go back to the part where Seb dressed up like a spaceman, yet you were the one who caused a scene?” he asks, and I try to wiggle away from him. I’d filled Miles in on the details of our bookstore visit both at his place and in the car, but he was still struggling with it.
“Shut up,” I mutter, and I swear he smirks before lifting his other hand and rapping his knuckles against the door. I’d expected some kind of secret knock, like Morse code or something, but as far as I can tell, it’s just your regular knock. Not even “a shave and a haircut.”
And there’s not some cool slit that slides open in the door, either, revealing just a pair of eyes and a barked order for a password. Instead, the door opens, and it’s a tall guy in a dark suit. From his earpiece and the general boringness of his suit, I know this has to be one of Seb’s bodyguards.
“He here?” Miles asks, and the guy nods, stepping aside to let us in.
“He’s fine tonight,” the man tells Miles, his eyes briefly moving over me, a little crease between his brows. I wonder if he knows who I am. He’d have to, right? They must be briefed on that kind of thing.
And then I wonder if he’ll tell Ellie I was here.
No time to worry about that, though, and even if he does, I can tell El I was here just to help Isabel and probably prevent a scandal. She’ll like that, right?
“That’s good to hear,” Miles says to the bodyguard, and I think of him coming to my room that first night. Is he always the one who goes in search of Seb? The bodyguard clearly thinks he’s here to check up on him.
“Downstairs, then, Simon?” Miles asks, and when the bodyguard nods, Miles gives him one of those quick smiles.
“Excellent,” he says, then steers me away from the door and deeper into the room.
“What is this place?” I ask. I’d been prepared for strobe lights, pounding music, a general air of debauchery tinged with just a hint of desperation. But this place is nice. Fancy, too. Paintings covering nearly every bit of wall space, heavy furniture, soft lamplight everywhere. At one end of the room is a massive mahogany bar, a long mirror stretching behind it. The carpet beneath my boots is a pale cream color with some kind of pattern worked into it in red, gold, and blue, and it’s so thick underneath my feet that I feel like I might sink into it. This isn’t some party place. My grandmother would have tea here.
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?”
I glance over at him, still remembering how genuinely cute he’d looked flirting with Missy. How bizarre that was.
Then I clue into what he’s saying and, more accurately, what he’s doing.