Page 29 of Her Royal Highness
“C’mon, luv,” the boy cajoles, and I’m just about to get up because honestly, at this point, dancing with him might be easier than continuing to argue, but to my surprise, Flora leans across the table.
“Is ‘no’ some kind of foreign concept here in Sheep Shagger Land?”
She asks the question with wide eyes and a sort of feigned curiosity, but there’s a bite behind the words and a glint in her gaze that the boy clearly sees, too. His face flushes, red blotches suddenly springing up on his cheeks.
Taking his hand off my arm, he steps back. “Easy, darling,” he says, palms out. “I was only asking her for a dance.”
“Right, but you kept asking after she’d said no, which is, I suppose, where my confusion comes in.”
“Flora,” I say, but now Seb’s friends are looking over, both the dark-haired guys and the blond, Gilly, and there’s this... spark in their eyes I don’t like.
“I don’t want any trouble,” the boy says, and now he’s also seen Seb’s friends.
But it’s Flora I watch, her lips curling as she says, “Then you picked the wrong people to mess with, mate.”
With that, she puts two fingers in her mouth and makes the most piercing whistle I’ve ever heard. I wince, shoulders going up to my ears, and my eyes go to the door. Weird as it sounds, I’m almost wondering if some kind of Royal Guard Dogs are going to burst in, dragging this unfortunate boy away. Wolfhounds, maybe.
But the whistle isn’t summoning trouble of the canine variety. Instead, all three of Seb’s friends suddenly present themselves. They all have slightly flushed faces, and they’re all definitely a little more rumpled than they were when we first came in.
At the bar, I see Seb glance over, and his lips purse with distaste for just a second before he gives a shrug, tosses back the rest of his beer, and then... bops the blonde on the tip of her nose with his index finger.
Instead of snatching his finger off like she should so obviously do, the blonde actually giggles, shifting her weight and tilting her head so that her hair swings in front of her face just so.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Saks mutters, watching them, but then Seb is swaggering over, hands in his pockets.
“Seriously?” he asks, nodding at the boy. “Just one bloke?”
“He was bothering us,” Flora says, and I look back and forth between the two of them.
“He really wasn’t—” I start to say, but Gilly cuts me off.
“Four to one, it’s just not sporting, Flo.”
“Indeed,” one of the dark-haired boys says. “This seems beneath us.”
Thoroughly confused now, I look around the table. “Wait, what are we talking about?”
But again, I might as well not even be here. “Beneath you?” Flora echoes. “Dons, you’re banned from the Balmoral Hotel because you tried to fly your underwear from the flagpole.”
“I did not try,” Dons replies with all the solemnity he can muster. “I succeeded. Or came near enough. Spiffy was there, and—”
“I’m sorry, can I just go now?” the guy who started all this asks, jerking his thumb back toward his table. “Because I deeply regret coming over here.” He gestures at me. “No offense, but you’re not even that hot.”
“So much offense?” I reply, and both Flora and Sakshi scowl at the guy, Flora’s fingers tightening around her pint glass.
Almost as one, Spiffy, Dons, Gilly, and Seb look where the guy is pointing.
“Ah, you’ve got mates!” Gilly says happily, clapping his hands together. “Well, in that case...”
And with that, he throws a punch.
The guy staggers back, his drink crashing to the floor, and the other guys at his table all shoot to their feet while Seb and his friends grin.
Seb even throws me another wink. “Sorry about this, love,” he says, and then there is a full-on fight happening.
The dude has rallied from Gilly’s admittedly pretty weak punch, and he grabs Spiffy around the middle, pushing him into an empty table as the bartender squawks.
“Oh god,” Perry whimpers, while Sakshi starts pushing at me.
