How to Fake It in Society

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

That was Eve in demotic French, valet-clad with hair in a neat queue, walking into Nico’s bedroom at an ungodly hour. Or possibly a civilised hour if one hadn’t had an unreasonable amount of difficulty in getting to sleep because one had been fuming over people one should have punched in the face.

That, and half dreaming of other comforts he might have offered Titus.

Nico wasn’t used to self-restraint in these matters; it had never previously been required. People approached him, rarely with subtlety, and if he liked them, they went to bed. That was the advantage of a milieu of theatre and gambling hells: People weren’t fussy.