The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  Then Felicity says, “Oh.”

  My eyes are starting to pinch, and I screw up my face against it. “Good old Father.”

  “I didn’t know that. I swear, Mother told me—”

  “Why are we talking about this?” I laugh again, because I don’t know what else to do. I want a drink so badly I’m ready to sprint to the next town for it. I press my fists against my eyes and suck in a sharp breath as pain shoots down my wrist. “My hand is absolutely broken.”

  “It’s not broken,” Felicity says, and the exasperation behind her voice makes me feel better.

  “I think it might be.”

  “It’s not.”

  “We should sleep,” Percy says.

  “Right.” I turn onto my side and find myself face-to-face with him. In the moonlight, his skin looks like polished stone. He smiles at me, so sympathetic it makes me shrivel up. Poor Monty, it says, and I want to die when I think of him pitying me.

  Poor Monty, with a father who beats you until you bleed.

  Poor Monty, with a fortune to inherit and an estate to run.

  Poor Monty, who’s useless and embarrassing.

  “Good night,” Percy says, then rolls over, away from me.

  Poor Monty, in love with your best friend.

  As it happens, there is no way to get comfortable on the ground, as it’s primarily composed of dirt and rocks and other sharp things that there’s a reason no one stuffs their mattresses with. I’m bone weary from the day, an ache left over from the panic still lingering in my limbs, but I lie for a long time on my back, then my side, then my other side, trying to cozy up and fall asleep and think about something that isn’t how hard it is to be stone-cold sober or my father beating the shit out of me after I was expelled from school. It’s running circles in my mind, all the vicious details of that week—my father’s face as the headmaster explained what had happened. The way that, after a while, he’d been hitting me for long enough that I heard more than felt the blows landing. The exquisite discomfort of the carriage ride home, my ribs rattling around in my chest every time we hit a rut and my head packed up tight, like it was full of cotton. All the things he called me that I’ll never forget.

  I had woken at home the next morning in the worst pain of my life, so sore I could hardly get out of bed, but my father made me come to breakfast and sit beside him. My mother didn’t say a word about why I’d arrived home looking like I’d run face-first into a stone wall at top speed, and the idea of Father being the reason I was swollen and bruised would have been so absurd to Felicity it apparently never crossed her mind.

  Halfway through breakfast, I excused myself to go vomit in the back garden, and when no one came after me, I stayed there, lying on the lawn beside the pond with no strength to get up. It was the same sort of day as when we left for our Tour—gray and stifling, the air sweating from a storm the night before and the sky threatening to tear open again. Patches of the garden path were still dark, and the grass was so damp that I was wet to the skin in minutes. But I didn’t move. I lay flat on my back, staring at the clouds and waiting for rain, shame rattling around inside me like a marble in a jar.

  After a time, a shadow fell across my face, and when I opened my eyes, there was Percy, silhouetted against the bright sky as he peered down at me. “Christ.”

  “Hallo there, darling.” My voice broke on the final word, because of course I needed this moment to be more humiliating than it already was. “How was your term?”

  “Jesus Christ. What happened?”

  “Eton threw me out.”

  “I heard. That’s not what I’m concerned about right now.”

  “Oh, this?” I waved a hand vaguely at my face, trying not to wince as I felt the pull in my ribs like the tightening of a violin string. “Don’t I look dashing?”

  “Monty.”

  “Piratical is perhaps a better word.”

  “Please be serious.”

  “Took a dozen men to bring me down.”

  “Who did this?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Percy didn’t say anything to that. Instead he lay down next to me, our faces side by side but our bodies pointing in opposite directions. A bird swooped low above us, chittering merrily. “So why’d they toss you out?” he asked.

  “Well. I had a bit of a gambling enthusiasm.”

  “Everyone at Eton has a gambling enthusiasm. It’s not enough to expel you.”

  “It was enough for them to search my rooms. And there was found some incriminating correspondence between myself and that lad I wrote to tell you about. Which was rather enough.”

  “Oh God.”

  “In my defense, he was very handsome.”

  “And they told your father about them, did they?”

  “Oh, he got to read them all. And then throw them back at me. Literally. Some of them he read aloud to punctuate . . .” I swiped a hand across the side of my face that felt less like an open wound. Percy pretended not to see. “So now he’s going to be home more, to keep an eye on me. Not so much time away in London, and that’s entirely my fault. I’m going to have to see him all the time and be around him—all the bleeding time, and it’s not going to change anything.”

  “I know.”

  “If he could beat this out of me, I would have let him long ago.”

  The clouds shifted and churned above us, spreading like blood across the sky. At the edge of the lawn, the pond tested its shores. Harpsichord music drifted through the parlor windows, heavy-handed scales played at top speed. Felicity practicing with great indignance.

  “I wish I were dead,” I said, then closed my eyes—or rather eye, one being out of commission—so I wouldn’t have to see Percy look at me, but I felt the grass prickle my neck as he shifted.

  “Do you mean that?”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d thought it—wouldn’t be the last either, though I didn’t know that then—but it was the first time I’d said it aloud, to anyone. It’s a strange thing, to want to die. Stranger still when you don’t feel you deserve to get away so easily. I should have fought myself harder, kept it all better penned. Shouldn’t have wanted to act on my unnatural instincts. Shouldn’t have felt so grateful and relieved and not alone for the first time in my life when Sinjon Westfall kissed me behind the dormitories on Saint Mark’s Eve, and so certain no one could ever make me ashamed for it. Not the headmaster, or my friends back home, or the other boys in my year. The whole while between being found out and waiting to be collected, I’d felt so defiant and righteous, unshakable in my surety that I’d done nothing wrong, but my father had knocked that straight out of me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Yes. Maybe.”

  “Well, don’t . . . don’t do that. Don’t want to be dead. Here.” Percy nudged me with his shoulder until I opened my eyes. He had his arm extended straight above us, fingers splayed wide. “Here are five reasons not to be dead. Number one, because your birthday is next month and I already have something really excellent for you and you don’t want to die before I give it to you.” I laughed a little at that, but I was so near tears it ended up sounding less like a laugh and more like a slurp. Percy didn’t comment. “Number two”—he was ticking them off on his fingers as he went—“if you weren’t around there’d be no one who’s worse than me at billiards. You are so rubbish at billiards it makes me look quite a bit better than I actually am. Number three, I wouldn’t have anyone who would hate Richard Peele with me.”

  “I hate Richard Peele,” I said quietly.

  “WE HATE RICHARD PEELE!” Percy seconded, so loud that a bird took flight from the hedgerow. I laughed again, and it sounded more human this time. “Number four, we still have never managed to slide all the way down the staircase at my house on a serving tray, and without you there, the inevitable victory will be hollow. And five”—he folded his thumb into his fist and pressed it up to the sky—“if you weren’t here, everything would be the worst. Abso-bloody-lutely awful. It’d b
e dull and lonely and just . . . don’t, all right? Don’t be dead. I’m sorry you were expelled and I’m sorry about your father but I’m so glad you’re home and I . . . really need you right now. So don’t wish you were dead because I’m so glad that you’re not.” Silence for a moment. Then Percy said, “All right?”

  And I said, “All right.”

  Percy climbed to his feet and offered me a hand. He was gentle about it, but I still winced as he pulled me up, and he had to steady me with a soft touch to my elbow. He’d gotten taller since I’d seen him at Christmas—somehow he suddenly had a good five inches on me—and he’d broadened out a bit as well, not so lanky and knobby and ninety percent knees like he’d always been, growing up. His limbs didn’t seem too long for his body anymore.

  When I look back on it now, I realize that must have been the first time, in all the while we’d known each other, it occurred to me that Percy might actually be rather handsome.

  Perspective is a goddamn son of a bitch.

  Marseilles

  8

  We are three days on the road, sleeping in sheltered groves and hitching rides on farmers’ carts through fields of close-fisted sunflowers and blooming lavender. We reach Marseilles in the late evening—the linkboys are already out trimming the lantern wicks. It’s a sprawling, shining city, cleaner and brighter than Paris. Notre-Dame de la Garde sits high on the hill above the sea, its white stone reflecting back the sunset as it caramelizes across the breakers, turning the waves gold. The streets of the Panier are narrow and high, wet washing strung between the windows catching the sunlight and flashing like glass.

  The banks are all shut up for the day, and as our plan was to find Father’s bank and see if a message from Lockwood or Sinclair has been left for us, we’re rather foiled. It seems we’re condemned to spend another night exposed to the elements unless we go knocking on doors at random, which makes me want to throw myself into the sea. I’m sore head to toe from the walking and the sleeping on hard ground, and my stomach is scratching against my spine. We’ve been eating a mixture of thieved and charitable scraps for days, and the meager breakfast swapped for Felicity’s earrings this morning left me long ago.

  As we wander down the main road, toward the fort guarding the harbor, we stumble upon a fair set up along the water, red-and-white-striped tents with ribbons knotted to their ropes and fluttering in the breeze. Paper garlands are strung over the walkways, and the air smells of boiling oil and the mealy tang of beer. Carts of food are lined up between the tents, piled with cheeses rolled in wax, greased turkey legs, skillets filled with candied almonds, and sweet rolls domed with liquefied sugar and berry coulis. It seems the most nickable supper we are going to find.

  Felicity takes charge of the thievery, so Percy and I find a table on the pier to wait for her, looking out across the syrupy water and the flocks of ships moored there, gulls flailing between them like snowflakes riding the wind. We sit on either side, Percy’s fiddle case between us. The wood grain is rough and weathered by years of being chewed at by the spray kicked up from the sea.

  I’m so tired I put my head down and close my eyes. “Never thought I’d say this, but I’ll be glad to see Lockwood.”

  Percy laughs wearily. “Are you getting sentimental?”

  “God no—he’s got our banknotes. I want a real drink and a real bed and real food—I could ravish a plate of cakes right now.” When Percy doesn’t reply, I sit up. He’s got his head balanced on his fists, and he looks weary. More than weary, verging on ill—clammy and absent, though I’m likely in an equally sorry state. “You look poorly.”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, then glances up, like he only just realized I spoke. “What?”

  “You don’t look well.”

  He shakes his head a few times to rouse himself. “I’m tired.”

  “So am I. We should be stronger than this. Though I suppose we did just walk across France.”

  “We didn’t walk across France,” Felicity says as she flops down on the bench beside me. She’s got a gibassier bun in each hand, fine grains of aniseed from the filling dusting her fingers.

  We eat with the sound of the sea and the tinkling melody of fair music underscoring our silence. I finish much faster than Percy or Felicity, who both seem to be trying to savor theirs while I opted for the method of gentlemanly inhalation. I suck the flakes of pastry off my fingers, then wipe my hands on my coattails, leaving oily tracks behind. My wrist knocks against the box in my pocket, and I pull it out and spin the dials.

  Felicity watches me, a thin strand of candied orange peel pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Describe for us what brilliant logic it was that led you to think stealing from the French king was a good idea.”

  “It wasn’t the king. It was his minister.”

  “I believe stealing from a minister to the king is still a capital offense. You’re going to have to return it, you know.”

  “Why? It’s just a trinket box.”

  “Because firstly, we are being pursued for it.”

  “Allegedly.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Secondly, because it is not yours. And thirdly, because it was an incredibly childish thing to do.”

  “You’re going to make a very fine governess someday with that enthusiasm for rule following,” I say, with a scowl. “That finishing school will have nothing to teach you.”

  She sticks the pad of her thumb in her mouth and sucks at a spot of glaze. “Perhaps I don’t want to go to school.”

  “Course you do. You’ve been whining for years about how badly you want schooling, and now you can stop being obnoxious because you’re finally going.”

  Her mouth puckers. “You know, saying things like that might be the reason most people find you insufferable.”

  “People find me insufferable?”

  “When you use that sort of phraseology, yes, it’s a word I’d use.”

  “I’m just being honest!”

  “Be a little less honest and a little more tactful.”

  “You’ve put up such a fuss—”

  “Yes, for education. An actual education, not finishing school—they’re going to squeeze me into corsets and bully me into silence.”

  It’s true—Felicity’s not a broken horse. A finishing school will kick the spirit straight out of her, and while I’ve never been particularly fond of my sister, the thought of a quiet, simpering, cross-stitching, tea-sipping Felicity feels like a slash through a painting.

  I almost begin to feel a bit sorry for her, but then she wrecks that with a sour “Do you know how horrid it feels to watch my brother get tossed out of the best boarding school in England, then get to travel the Continent as a reward, while I’m stuck behind, not permitted to study the same things or read the same books or even visit the same places while we’re abroad, just because I had the bad luck to be born a girl?”

  “Reward?” My temper is starting to rise to match hers. “You think this tour is a reward? This is a last meal before my execution.”

  “Oh, how tragic, you have to run an estate and be a lord and have a good, rich, cozy life on your own terms.”

  I gape at her—mostly because I thought we had developed some understanding between us, after what I had confessed to her the night of the highwaymen’s attack, that there is nothing cozy about the life I’ll be walking back to at the end of this year, but here she is spitting in my face like a mouthful of melon seeds.

  “Leave him alone, Felicity,” Percy says quietly.

  Felicity flicks a pastry flake from her thumb with the tip of her finger, then says, with an upturned nose, “How lucky we would all be to have the problems of Henry Montague.”

  I stand up, because Felicity learned to be mean from our father, and with each snide comment the shade of him is filtering through darker and darker.

  “Where are you going?” Percy calls.

  “To wash all this damn sap off my hands,” I say, though it’s fairly transparent I’m storming o
ff because of my sister.

  I walk for a minute, directionless, my head fuzzy with anger and also a lot of wanting for a drink, before I realize I have no clue where I’m going and I’ve got to be able to find my way back to Percy and Felicity. I stop. A group of children skate by me, their hands linked and their hair flying behind them, angling toward a man setting up a projector for a magic lantern show. A woman outside a viciously green tent shouts in my direction, “Look into my eye for a sight of your own death! Only a sou for a glance!” A pair of acrobats balance on their hands over the edge of the pier, to applause from a sparse audience.

  “Vos pieds sont douloureux,” someone says behind me, and I turn.

  A wooden stand with a purple awning is set up against the edge of the pier, the word Apothicaire stenciled over a slop of red paint on the front. A man with coarse graying hair, a leather apron thrown over his patchy coat, is behind the counter, leaning against it on his elbows. Behind him, shelves are stuffed with an assortment of bottles and vials, labels peeling away like dead skin and the monikers of their tinctures sketched in spidery handwriting across them. A gallery of maladies.

  “Pardon?” I say when I realize he’s addressing me. “Sorry?”

  “Vos pieds. Your feet. You have sore feet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You’re walking on them strangely, like they’re hurting you. You need an ointment.”

  “Bet you say that to everyone who passes.”

  “I don’t always mean it. You—I’m worried for your feet.”

  “I’m walking fine.”

  “Then something else. You’re too stiff to be without pain. A mistake of the young, maybe? A venereal pox?”

  “What? No. Definitely not that.”

  He waggles a finger at me. “You’re not well. I can tell it.”

  I try to edge away, but he keeps talking, his voice getting louder the farther I go, and I don’t want some randy medicine man shouting across the pier that I’ve got something festering on my bits, so I snap at him, more peevish than I intend, “I’m not unwell, I’m unhappy.”