Page 52 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

She didn't comment on the weight of magic swimming around Deepa’s sun-coloured sari, though it must have been strong enough to intoxicate her.

“Come on, come and meet everyone,” Deepa urged, tugging Roz into the garden. “You said you didn’t want to see Appleton, but really, you might like him if you’d give him the chance.”

“Why should I?” Roz asked, reluctantly following along.

“Because, for all my complaints about my suitors at The Songbird, Appleton’s really quite decent,” Deepa said with a smile. “And it might set your mind at ease.”

“That so?”

“In a perfectly simple world, he’d be the ideal man for me to marry,” Deepa informed her, plastering cheer overtop the memory of his earlier rejection. It was but a temporary setback. “He could solve all my problems at once. Obviously, nothing’s simple, but I’ve never let that stop me before.”

Roz dug her heels in, bringing Deepa to a teetering halt. “I’d rather not.”

Crestfallen, Deepa said, “I can’t make you talk to him, but I wish you’d at least humour me.”

Shaking her head, Roz offered a tight smile. “I know it’s a business arrangement, and I said I wasn't much for jealousy. But let’s not put it to the test, yeah?” Slipping free of Deepa’s grasp,Roz patted her hand before stepping back. “I’m going to go have a perfectly nice time without running into your beau. Your friends are a right laugh; I'll stick with them, and catch up with you in a bit. Don’t worry about me, alright? Go work your magic. Do what you have to do.”

Slinging her hands in her pockets, Roz strode after Aaliyah and the rest of Deepa’s friends, steering clear of the larger gatherings like she expected them to snap at her or tell her to get out.

Deepa watched her go, regret and uncertainty turning her stomach, before she shook herself out of it. Her friends would see that Roz was taken care of. Roz might not be the best fit for Appleton’s world, but Deepa knew how to make things seem like they belonged in places they had no business being.

In the meantime, she had a job to do. Setting her shoulders back, she put a swing in her step and went to find Appleton, coaxing him out of his hiding place and back into the limelight to fan the flames of the tireless rumour machine. When everyone was drunk enough that dancing was the only possible course of action, she dragged Appleton into the midst of it and kissed him so thoroughly that there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the validity of their relationship. He played his part, putting his hands on her waist and kissing back with a hunger neither of them felt. They kept at it until laughter erupted around them, and Charlotte intervened by throwing a wadded napkin at her brother’s shoulder.

“Enough!” she protested laughingly. “Take that back to Eden if you want to carry on, but you’re not doing it in the middle of my party.”

“Apologies,” Appleton murmured, not meeting Deepa’s eye.

“Well, I’m not sorry,” said Deepa, to more laughter and more than one wolf-whistle. “But, you're right. It's not for polite company.”

“Last time I kissed a girl like that,” said one of the men, “I had to marry her.”

“Oh, don’t say that in front of my brother! You’ll scare him back into hiding.”

“Let's give ourselves a bit more time to work up to that,” Deepa said diplomatically with a dazzling smile.

Through the crowd of dancers, she caught Roz’s gaze, and her stomach dropped at the unreadable expression on her face.

“I have to admit, I feel some kind of way about going out with a girl who’s openly scheming to marry someone else while she's with me,” Roz said when Deepa caught her alone by the drinks.

“I’ve always been upfront about my goals. It's not as if I'm having a love affair behind your back.”

“I know. And I’m not judging you for doing what you feel you've got to do. I just don’t much like watching it unfold right in front of me, as it turns out.”

Deepa sighed. “I don’t blame you for not liking it, but there’s really nothing to be jealous of. Even if I wanted to run away with Appleton, it’s not as if he can actually marry me.”

“Good to know you haven’t put any thought into it,” Roz said, flatter than Deepa had ever heard her.

“Nothing’s changed,” Deepa said uncertainly. “I’ve told you from the beginning, this is strictly mercenary. It’s not as if we love each other.”

“And you told me from the beginning that you never meant to marry any man, but you’ve never had your hooks in any as posh as this one,” Roz countered. Before Deepa could object, Roz huffed a sharp sigh and shook her head. “Look, never mind. I’m not trying to get into anything with you. I’ve just seen how this goes, alright? Nobody wants to get roped into marriage until all of a sudden, it gets too hard to keep hacking it without a man to smooth the way. It happens every day; it’s nothing unique to you.”

“Fine, yes, obviously I’ve put some thought into it,” Deepa returned with a crinkle of annoyance. Her tipsiness retreated in the face of an argument, leaving her hungry and on edge. “That’s what I do: I weigh my options. There are some marriage arrangements, such as what Aaliyah has with Alphonse, that I might consider worthwhile. But if you think for one second that I’m about to throw you over to tie myself legally, romantically,exclusively, to some man who can't hope to satisfy me half as well as you do, you must think me completely mad. Because,” she continued, coming close to run her hand over the front of Roz’s suit, “you’re meeting my needs perfectly well, in case you haven’t noticed. Or am I remembering last weekend very differently?”

Roz was resistant to her levity. “I don’t want to get in your way, or for you to stop what you're doing on my account. I’ll just head off a bit early. And I probably won't come out to the next one of these.”

“Wait,” Deepa said quickly, catching her when she turned to go. “Don't leave without setting up our next date.”

Roz hesitated, her expression cautious. Everything had gone so terribly pear-shaped in the course of a single afternoon; it was crucial that Deepa wasted no time in winning her back.

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