"Heavens no, I heard about it from my dear cousin Mrs. Litt, whose fashion advice I don't doubt." Because Lucette can't doubt advice she doesn't hear. Mildred Litt's closest friend is married to the owner of several mines and thus Mildred was able to inform Lucette that the new mines in the East Indies have largely closed due to political infighting of some kind, and Lucette is aware from discussions with her tailor that some of those mines are the ones responsible for the recent glut of garnets. 

"I'd prefer more blue myself," says the young lord. 

One of the young ladies who has not yet volunteered an opinion quickly takes advantage of the opportunity to agree with him that blue items, like sapphires or that delightful suit he's wearing, are obviously much better.

Hopefully if anyone notices the Duke of Beruna's eye color it'll pass as a trivial ethnic variation found in Narnia. Frankly if he'd come out with shiny silver hair that might have done likewise.

Yes, they are not surprised that he looks exotic, eye color included. Most of the attention is focused on the other young lord, who has just finished telling a funny story involving a servant he asked to fetch a goose, and rather than bringing him a cooked goose they'd presented him with a live one. The assembled ladies giggle appreciatively at the amusing anecdote. 

Lucette is going to need to spend more time practicing her giggling to make sure it doesn't sound insincere, isn't she.

Are there other men at this party, who might be having conversations about things other than the unobjectionable son of an extremely wealthy earl and how cool and fun he is? Not that they're likely to be talking about things that are substantially more interesting but the act of checking will pass the time.

Some men are discussing an upcoming boxing match, another group is obliquely discussing the quality of company at a particular location in the commoner's quarter, a few more are discussing the renovations made to their city manors lately, and one last group is discussing the attempts to repel a particularly migratory wild demon from farming land and whether there might be a campaign to vanquish it for good.

He'll listen in on the last conversation. If they rebuff him he'll take the renovations one.

"I doubt it would even be particularly resilient - it's harmless when it's in motion."

"Wasn't it fast enough to get your uncle before it froze? How is he recovering?"

"Well enough, though I'll admit he hasn't been quite the same since."

Yeah he's mostly going to listen, he doesn't have the context to contribute.

He can piece together that the particular wild demon alternates between a form similar to an exceptionally clear flood and a frozen form that looks like glass but is considerably strong. It flows around victims before switching to the solid form and suffocating them. There is also presumably more to it that they aren't yet aware of - the uncle in question adversely reacts to water sometimes and hasn't recovered despite still being empowered.

Amorphous demons, interesting.

"- I'd worry less if it were just passing by the outskirts of my family's land but we lost a substantial amount of livestock and commoners during the attack two autumns ago, and it seems to be approaching just as close as then."

Livestock and commoners. Ah-huh.

Eventually it occurs to one of the young men to ask what the procedure to handle such a wild demon might be in Narnia.

"Well, as I'm not empowered myself I have only a spectator's view of the situation. There are specialists who'd decide which powers would make the best combined team to assail a recurring problem like that one, and aim to be ready for it the next time it presented itself, but the details..." Shrug.

"What makes someone such a specialist?"

"Experience, relevant instincts, powers suited to leading such a team themselves sometimes."

"Did you know any yourself?"

The thing is he'd be perfectly happy to reskin the espers he knows as empowered demon-hunters but he doesn't know what kinds of powers would be totally implausible, so he must avoid being cornered into needing detail on that. "Oh, a few, but they didn't tend to talk shop when they weren't actively researching or preparing for a demon."

"Researching?"

Did he mess up. "Oh, collecting rumors, visiting places it'd hit before to see what they could gather about how it moved and what it was doing there, probably other things I'm not thinking of because I wasn't privy to these discussions."

"Oh, that sounds reasonable. Typically whoever's land the demon infringes on would deal with that here."

"Some information is always lost in the retelling, I find."

"Do the specialists get information from sources other than people then?"