The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  Aristocratic ladies, it should be noted, wear a beastly lot of clothing. Particularly at parties. I could strip to nothing in twenty seconds if given adequate motivation, and she’s more than adequate. But undressing Jeanne is not as easy as it was when I imagined it every time she removed another piece of jewelry. My mouth is still on hers as we stagger to our feet, so I haven’t even got a good view of what it is I’m meant to be ripping off. I take a guess and tear at the laces until something snaps and the stomacher falls away, which at least pops her breasts from their breast prison. But then there’s a ghastly cage around her waist, with petticoats and corsets and a chemise and I swear to God there’s another corset under that and then a whole creative other layer of who-knows-what but I’m certain it’s there simply to keep me from her skin. Perhaps fashion is just a reinforcement of a lady’s chastity, in hopes that the interested party may lose interest and abandon any deflowering attempts simply for all the clothing in the way.

  In contrast, Jeanne only needs undo four buttons on the flap of my breeches and then slide them down my hips, which is just unfair. Her fingers wend their way up my spine, and I’m shocked suddenly from the moment by the memory of Percy’s hands there, his palms parentheses around my rib cage and a touch that made me feel hungry and breakable. His legs wrapped around me. The sound of his short, sharp breath when I put my lips to his neck.

  Goddammit, Percy.

  I let go of Jeanne just long enough to unfasten the buttons at my knees and get my breeches around my ankles, then I kick them onto the sofa in a high arc. She traces my lips with the tip of her tongue, talc from her skin coating my mouth, and, hellfire and damnation, I am not thinking about Percy. I put my arms all the way around her, jerking her toward me.

  Then, from behind us, the door latch snaps and someone says, “What’s going on?”

  I whip my hands out of Jeanne’s dress, nearly losing a finger in the process since somehow I’ve gotten tangled in the back lacings of her corsets. The Duke of Bourbon fills the doorway to the room, two more lordly-looking gentlemen at his sides, all of them with their mouths gaping, like beached fish.

  I let fly a choice four-letter word and try to shield myself with the massive cage Jeanne has strapped to her waist.

  The duke squints at me. “God, Disley?”

  “Um, yes. Evening! Bourbon, wasn’t it?”

  His face sets. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “To be clear . . . ,” I say, edging toward the sofa where my clothes are piled and cursing myself for having made such a dramatic show of flinging them away. I have to drag Jeanne with me to be certain I stay concealed. “Here as in Versailles? Because I was certainly invited.”

  “In my apartments. What are you doing in my damned apartments?”

  “Oh, you mean here as in here.”

  “You vile little rake, just like your—” His face is going red and I brace myself, but his attention is commandeered by Jeanne, still standing bare-breasted at my side. “Mademoiselle Le Brey, cover yourself, for God’s sake,” he snaps.

  Jeanne starts tugging at her corset, which does less to cover her and more to emphasize the fact that she’s not. The two other men are gaping at her chest and Bourbon looks like he’s about to commit homicide upon anyone within an arm’s distance and I am well versed in seizing the moment, so I snatch my clothes off the sofa and make my escape straight out the open window.

  Which is how I come to be running through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dressed only as Nature intended.

  I round a hedgerow flanking the Orangerie, realizing that beyond actually fleeing the scene, I have no exit strategy. I have a strong sense I’m being chased and I haven’t time to stop on the lawn and re-dress. I try to pull my breeches back on as I go and nearly lurch face-first into the shrubbery, so I choose to keep my clothing bundled up in front of my most vulnerable parts and continue my flight.

  I skirt the wall of the palace, trying to avoid the windows and stay between the topiaries. There isn’t an empty room—nowhere I could dart in and hide or re-robe myself. I’m disoriented and distracted, and go farther than I intend to. When I round the next corner, I find I am in the courtyard, partygoers spilling down the stairs and into the bright lights. I stop dead, which is a fatal miscalculation on my part because a woman sees me and shrieks.

  And then everyone turns to stare at me, the Viscount of Disley, standing in the courtyard, with his hair askew and a woman’s powder smeared across his face like flour. And, also, without a stitch of clothing on.

  And then, because Fortune is a heartless bitch, I hear someone behind me say, “Monty?”

  And, of course, there is Percy, standing beside Felicity, who for the first time in all of her born days seems too shocked to be smirking, and with them, the lord ambassador and his wife. We all gape at each other. Or rather, they gape at me.

  There’s really nothing to do but pretend I’m fully clothed and in control of the situation. So I walk up to Percy and say, “There you are. I think we should be going.”

  They’re all staring at me. The whole courtyard is staring at me, but it’s Percy and Felicity that I feel the most. Felicity’s got her fish mouth in place but Percy’s shock is starting to fade and he looks . . . embarrassed—of me or for me, it’s hard to say.

  “My lord,” the ambassador says, and I turn, still trying to play dead casual. His wife squeaks.

  “Yes, sir?”

  His face is scarlet. “Have you . . . any possible explanation for your current state of dress?”

  “Undress,” I correct him. “And thank you so much for a lovely evening; it’s been quite . . . revealing. But we’re expected home, so we’ll hear from you soon? We should have you for supper before we move south. Percy? Felicity?” I would take their arms but my hands are otherwise occupied, so I tip my chin up and begin to walk away and hope to God they will follow me. They both do, though neither says a word.

  When we are at last installed again in our carriage by some rather wide-eyed attendants, I drop my shield and start to shuffle back into my breeches. Felicity throws up her hands with a shriek. “Dear God, Monty, my eyes.”

  I arch my back, trying to wriggle in without striking my head on one of the hanging lanterns. “Shame you haven’t your attractive specs on.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Look at what I’m wearing and make an educated guess.” I fasten my breeches, then look over at Percy, who is staring forward, stone-faced. “What’s the matter with you?”

  His mouth tightens. “Are you drunk?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you drunk?” he repeats.

  “Have you ever seen him sober?” Felicity says under her breath.

  Percy’s still staring away from me, though that stare is turning into a glare. “Can’t you control yourself? Ever?”

  “I’m sorry, are you getting on me to behave? You aren’t exactly a saintly enough candidate to be delivering a morality lecture, darling.”

  “Do you think I could ever act the way you do and get away with it?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look at me and take a guess.”

  “Really? You want to have that conversation right now? You let everyone walk all over you because you’re skin’s a bit dark—”

  “Oh dear God, Monty, stop,” Felicity says.

  “—but if you’d grow a spine, I wouldn’t have to stand up for you because you’d do it yourself.”

  He looks, for a moment, too astonished to speak. Felicity’s gaping at me too, and I have a deep sense I have said something very wrong, but then Percy tips his chin up. “If that was me—caught naked with some . . . person at the palace—I wouldn’t have been permitted to walk away from that garden the way you just did.”

  I start to say something, but he interrupts, his voice slicing, “Aren’t you tired of this—aren’t you tired of being this person? You look like a drunken ass all the time, all the bloody time, and it
’s getting . . .”

  “It’s getting what, Percy?” He’s not going to say it, so I offer the word up for him. “Embarrassing? Are you embarrassed of me?”

  He doesn’t reply, which is answer enough. I wait for defiance to filter through me, but instead I’m filled with it too, that hot, rancid shame rising like a fetid tide.

  “Who was she?” Felicity demands. “It was a she, wasn’t it?”

  I pull my shirt over my head with a bit more force than is needed. The collar snags my hair. “A girl I met.”

  “And what happened to her?”

  “I don’t know, I bolted.”

  “You were caught with a woman and then you left her there? Monty, you tomcat!”

  “She’ll be fine. They didn’t chase me down.”

  “Because you’re a man.”

  “So?”

  “It’s different for women. No one condemns a man for that sort of thing, but she’ll carry that with her.”

  “It won’t matter, she’s someone’s mistress. She’s just a whore!”

  Felicity’s hands fist around her dress, and for a moment I think she may slap me, but the carriage strikes a rut and we’re all three nearly unseated. She catches herself on the window treatments, then glares at me again. “Don’t you dare,” she says, her voice low and tight, “say anything like that ever again. This is your fault, Henry. No one else’s.”

  I look to Percy, but he’s staring out the window now with his face still stone, and I realize what a stupid mistake it was to think Percy gave half a damn what I was doing with a French courtier in a back room. I slink down in my seat and hate them both intensely. I’ve been betrayed—Felicity’s never been on my side, but I thought I could count on Percy. Though now it seems the whole world has been scrambled up.

  6

  I intend to sleep the next morning until I can sleep no more, but Sinclair wakes me early—the sky outside my window is still opaline with the sunrise. It takes me a while to rally myself to get out of bed. Partly because I’m wrung out and partly because I’m absolutely writhing at the thought of looking Percy and Felicity in the eyes. Mostly Percy. I’m also feeling worse than I expected—I didn’t think I had drunk that much, thanks to the lord ambassador’s blockade, but my stomach won’t sit still, and my whole body feels as though it’s been dragged behind a carriage.

  I roll from bed after at least a half of an hour and scrub water from the basin in the corner across my face. I’m light-headed and wobbly when I raise my head to the glass, and I stagger sideways, stepping directly onto my balled-up coat from the night previous. A sharp stab of pain goes through my foot and I sit down hard with a yelp.

  I’ve stepped upon the box I picked up in the duke’s apartments; it’s still in the pocket of my coat, with its edges snagged in the stitchery. It’s stranger in the daylight and away from the delirious shine of the party. I spin the dials round, spelling out the first few letters of my name. In the wake of my grand exit, I forgot I took it, though now the same sort of savage pleasure I got the night before at pocketing it comes back, which is the only good thing about the morning thus far. I tuck the box into my coat pocket, a reminder that I am somewhat clever and not everything is terrible.

  When I finally drag myself from my room, I find that we are packing. The servants have trunks open and spread out across the sitting room. A few are being hauled below stairs. Felicity is at the breakfast table, staring at her novel with too much determination to be natural, and Lockwood is beside her, a damask banyan over his suit and his eyes fixed upon my bedroom door—waiting for me. The news of my display has most certainly reached him. Nothing travels quite so swiftly as gossip.

  Mr. Lockwood stands up and fastens his banyan as furiously as I’ve ever seen anyone fasten anything. “I see I have been too lax in my discipline.”

  “Discipline?” I repeat. All the banging luggage has got a headache throbbing against my eyes. “We’re on our Tour. We’re meant to be having a good time.”

  “A good time, yes, but this, my lord, is unacceptable. You shamed your hosts, who were kind enough to bring you to a social event you should have been grateful to attend. You debased your father’s good name before his friends. Each one of your foolish actions reflects as much upon him as it does upon you. You,” he says, his voice pinched up as tight as his forehead, “are an embarrassment.”

  Several hours from now, I will certainly think of a retort to this, a perfect combination of wit and defiance that would leave him stumbling. But in that moment, I can’t think of a damn thing, so I stand there, struck dumb, and let him scold me like a child.

  “I did warn you,” Lockwood says, “as did your father, that inappropriate behavior would not be tolerated. So you and I will be returning to England forthwith.”

  I swear the floor drops out from beneath me at the thought of seeing my father again so much quicker than I anticipated and under such grim circumstances.

  “However,” Mr. Lockwood continues, “as I’m responsible for seeing your sister to school, we’ll be departing for Marseilles this morning to deliver her before we return.”

  At the table, Felicity winces a little, but Lockwood takes no notice. “Once Miss Montague has been installed, Mr. Newton will go north to Holland and you and I will leave for England, where you will take responsibility before your father for your actions.”

  Don’t come back at all. I can still hear him say it.

  “I don’t want to go home,” I say, and my feeble attempt to varnish over my panic turns the words far more petulant than I intend. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “My lord, your behavior was disgraceful. Doubly so since you deny the impropriety. You are a shame to yourself, and to your family name.” He’s brandy-faced and reckless now, and even as he speaks again I can see that he doesn’t mean to say it, but it doesn’t matter, because he does. “No wonder your father doesn’t want you around.”

  I want to knock his nose flat for saying that. Instead I throw up on his slippers, which is only slightly less satisfying.

  Our journey to Marseilles is uncomfortable, in both the literal and the more abstract senses of the word. Lockwood clearly chose to flee the burning remains of my reputation in Paris before anyone had time to properly smell the smoke, so arrangements for our flight are cobbled together. Sinclair is sent ahead for lodging in Marseilles, but inns along the way are scarce, and we often find ourselves scrambling for housing. It would be easier, but we’ve got Felicity, and most places don’t take ladies—or Negroes either, and Percy’s just dark enough that we’re sometimes barred because of him.

  Our progress is slow. The roads are rougher than those from Calais to Paris, and we break an axletree outside of Lyon, which delays us almost half a day. We left our Parisian staff and a good deal of luggage to follow us later—we travel with only a valet and a coachman—so I’m doing far more of my own upkeep than I’m accustomed to. We wake each morning to a blistering sun, and I’m soaked in sweat before noonday.

  None of us are speaking to each other. Felicity keeps her nose tucked into her novel, finishes it by the end of the first day, then immediately begins it again. Lockwood makes a study of Lassels’s The Voyage of Italy, which seems like simply a means of reminding me of the places we won’t see because of the damage I’ve wrought. Percy looks everywhere but at me, and when we stop to lodge on the first night, he asks Lockwood to get us separate rooms, which is the most openly spiteful gesture I’ve ever received from him.

  On the fifth day of the most uncomfortable breed of silence I’ve ever endured, we shift from pastured countryside into woodlands, crackled trees with bare, slim trunks sheltering the rutted road from the summer heat. Their branches scrape against the carriage roof like fingers as we pass beneath them.

  We’ve seen few other travelers in the forest, so the sounds of horses, then men’s voices, startle us all. Felicity even looks up from her book. Lockwood twitches back the drapes for a view of the road.

  Our carriage fl
ails to a halt, so abrupt that Lockwood nearly pitches out the window. I catch myself on Felicity, who shoulders me off.

  “Why’ve we stopped?” Percy asks.

  The voices get louder—angry and persistent French I can’t understand. The carriage dips as our coachman climbs down.

  “Out!” a voice barks. “Tell your passengers to disembark or they will be made to.” The carriage bounces again, then there’s a crack. A moment later, one of our trunks drops past the window and smashes against the ground.

  “What’s going on?” Felicity says quietly.

  “Out, now!” someone shouts.

  Lockwood peers through the gap in the drapes, then snaps back into his seat. His face is white. “Highwaymen,” he says under his breath.

  “Highwaymen?” I cry, loud as he was soft. “Are we actually being robbed by honest-to-God highwaymen?”

  “Don’t panic,” Lockwood instructs, though he looks panicked. “I’ve read what to do.”

  “You’ve read?” I repeat. I half expect Felicity to leap to the defense of reading, but she’s got her mouth clamped shut. Her knuckles are white around the spine of her book.

  “We will comply with all their demands,” Lockwood says. “Most highwaymen are simply looking for easy money and to get away quickly. Things can be replaced.” There’s a loud thwack on the side of the carriage like someone’s slapped it. We all jump. Percy’s hand fastens around my knee. Lockwood blanches, then straightens his coat. “I shall reason with them. Do not leave this carriage unless I instruct you to do so.”

  And into the breach he goes.

  The three of us stay statued inside, the silence between us a very loud thing. The carriage shakes as the highwaymen unfasten the rest of our trunks from the roof. It won’t take them long to go through the little luggage we have with us and pick out the shiny things. Then they’ll let us go. And we will proceed to Marseilles with a bit less baggage and an excellent war story that will impress all the lads back home. That is what I tell myself in my head, though the brash instructions from outside seem to say otherwise.