The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  “And how did you come to be in possession of it?” she asks.

  Felicity and Percy both look to me, like they’re giving me the choice of how honest I’d like to be. “I stole it,” I say, which comes out a bit blunter than it sounded in my head. “I didn’t know it had any value,” I add quickly when the Robles siblings both look strangely at me. “I was just looking for something to steal.”

  Which certainly makes me sound benevolent.

  Then, to truly buttress the image I have painted of myself as gallant swain, I finish, “And we were coerced into returning it.”

  Percy—bless—comes to my rescue. “There are dangerous people looking for it. They were ready to kill us for its possession.”

  Neither Dante nor Helena looks particularly surprised by this news. “Likely the same men who stole it from us,” Helena says.

  “What’s inside?” Felicity asks. “If you don’t mind. We were told about its make, but that’s all.”

  Dante sets the box on the desk, then immediately picks it up again. He looks to his sister, and they seem to conduct a silent conversation using only their eyebrows. Then Dante says, “We don’t know.”

  Which is rather disappointing.

  “His work was panaceas, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Is it anything to do with—”

  “Our father had many theories,” Helena interrupts.

  “Could we ask you—” I start, and Dante looks ready to answer but Helena parries before he can.

  “His work died with him,” she says. “If you’ve read his book, you know as much as we do. We can’t help you if you’re looking for information.”

  My heart sinks, though her words are a bit too rehearsed for me to swallow them as sincere. And Dante’s doing a shifty-eyed dance that would do him no favors at a card table.

  “Can you open it?” Felicity asks. “There’s a cipher—a word that unlocks it.”

  Dante shakes his head. “He never told us. But thank you—thank you for returning it—for bringing it back to us. It is—was—sorry, it’s so . . .” He pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, and I’m afraid he might start to cry. Then he looks up and finishes, dry-eyed, “Important to our father. So it’s important to us. He told us to protect it and we . . . But now you’ve brought it back.” He looks at Felicity, and she smiles at him. He goes positively vermillion.

  An uncomfortable silence falls between us. Dante kicks his legs against the chair like a boy, then says, “Well, it was very nice to meet you all.”

  “Oh, yes, we should leave you be.” Felicity stands from her perch on the arm of my chair, and Percy picks up his fiddle case, and for a moment it seems that our arduous journey is going to end in a single afternoon and a dead end. I can hardly bear to look at Percy for fear I’ll crumple up at the thought of failing him.

  But then Helena says, “Don’t be absurd. If you came all the way from France, you’ll stay here, at least for tonight.”

  “Oh, they don’t—” Dante looks up at her, but she ignores him.

  “You’ve done us a great service.” She taps a finger toward the box, of which Dante still hasn’t let go. “It’s the least we can do in return.”

  “I don’t think—” he says at the same time Felicity protests, “We don’t want to impose!”

  “Just for the night,” Helena interrupts, sort of to both of them. “We can feed you and get you into some clean things and at least give you a proper bed. Do stay, please.”

  Felicity still looks ready to refuse, so I make a verbal hurdle between them. “Yes, thank you, we’d love to stay.”

  Felicity deals me a murderous look from the corner of her eye, just as Dante does the same to his sister. Helena and I both ignore our siblings. I’m not certain Helena’s intentions toward us are entirely innocent, but I am certain mine aren’t. I’m not convinced there’s nothing in this house that might be of use to Percy, and if the sister won’t tell us, the brother looks ready to collapse like poorly made furniture if pressed. And I’m keen to press.

  Helena gives Dante a little encouragement with the tips of her fingers on his shoulder. “Dante, could you show them abovestairs?”

  “Right. Yes.” He clambers to his feet, trips over the drawer he opened earlier, and catches himself on the edge of the crystallophone. The glasses clink together. It’s an eerie, haunted sound.

  “Do you play?” Percy asks him.

  Dante goes red again. “Oh, um, no. It was—”

  “Your father’s?” Percy fills in for him.

  “Part of his collection,” Dante mumbles.

  “What’s a crystallophone have to do with alchemy?” I ask.

  “Not alchemy—death, and burial practices. Before he . . . died, he became . . . quite obsessed.”

  “Dante,” Helena says quietly, her tone a bowstring drawing back a poison-tipped arrow.

  Dante dips his hand into the bowl of water and runs his finger along the top of one of the glasses. It releases a wobbling note, more vibration than sound. “There’s a song . . . If played on the crystallophone,” he says, “it is believed to summon back the spirits of the dead.”

  15

  The house is small in spite of its height, and with the three of us added, there aren’t enough beds. Felicity takes the only spare, while Dante gives Percy and me his apartments to share, a second-floor chamber with meager furnishings and walls that may have once been red, but have faded to the coppery brown of blood dried into linen. He lends us each a set of nightclothes and a change for the morning so we can let the garments we’ve been living in for a fortnight have a good soak—they seem likely to stand on their own when we shuck them.

  In spite of all the beds Percy and I have been sharing along the road, this is the first time we’ve slept alone together since we were home, and the first time I haven’t had an excuse to not disrobe entirely for bed. I’ve never been shy about undressing in front of Percy, but suddenly the idea of it makes the entirety of my being blush, so I wait until he’s occupied with the razor and the mirror before I strip quickly and put on my nightclothes. Dante’s an average-sized fellow, so the sleeves of the dressing gown pool over my arms. I have to keep tossing them back, like I’m raising my hands to conduct an orchestra.

  When Percy’s finished, I take his place before the dressing table and tuck into my first proper wash in weeks, which is sincerely the most marvelous thing that’s happened since those two ecstatic minutes of our kiss in Paris.

  “Did you think that was strange?” he asks as I stand at the mirror with my back to him, shaving. I can hear him shuffling about the room, making ready for bed.

  The light is very poor and the glass very spotted, and it’s taking all my concentration not to accidentally slit my own throat with the razor, but I manage to reply, “What was strange?”

  “I don’t know. Helena and Dante. All of it.”

  “Think they’ve asked us to stay so they can smother us in our sleep because we know too much?” I scrape a rim of soap off the blade and onto the edge of the basin. “I think they’re holding out.”

  “How are they holding out? They don’t owe us anything.”

  “I think they know what’s in the box. Or at least have an inkling. They both got shifty when I asked about the cure-alls. Whatever’s inside it must have to do with their father’s work.”

  “Perhaps he was trying to turn rocks into gold. That’s alchemy too.”

  “But that’s not what we came for.”

  “Perhaps that box is full of rock-gold.” Behind me, there’s a flump as Percy drops his clothes to the floor. I catch the edge of my chin with the blade, and a glassy bead of blood rises to the surface of my skin. I press my thumb to it.

  “I’m going to ask Dante tomorrow, before we depart,” I say.

  “About what?”

  “About the cure-alls. He seems like an agreeable-enough chap, if you get him on his own.” I tip my head for a better view of my jawline, checking for patches I missed. “Can’t de
cide about the sister, though. She’s a bit . . .”

  “Intense?”

  “Well, yes, but she’s gorgeous, which makes that intensity less repellent.”

  Behind me, Percy gives a laugh that’s mostly a groan. “Henry Montague.”

  “What? She is.”

  “I swear, you would play the coquette with a well-upholstered sofa.”

  “First, I would not. And second, how handsome is this sofa?” Now Percy groans in earnest. I scrub the rest of the soap off my face. “If you were half as pretty as me, darling, you might understand—”

  I turn, and the words crumble into dust. Percy’s sitting on the bed, fiddling with a tinderbox on the nightstand and wearing nothing but a long shirt, which has gotten bunched up around his hips, leaving very little to my imagination. The neck hangs open so that the dusky light slides over the smooth skin of his chest like oil on water.

  It is perhaps the most unfair play in the history of unrequited love.

  I take a step back without meaning to, knocking into the dressing table. The razor stone falls to the ground with a clatter.

  Percy looks up. “I might understand what?”

  “I . . .” And I can’t stay here with him, let alone sleep next to him—very suddenly, it is all too much, to think of lying with him, chaste and distant but with the sheets warm from his skin and his drowsy breath against my ear. I think it might eat me alive. I’m halfway to the door, my back against the wall, before I even realize I’ve moved. My hands are strangling the ties of my dressing gown. “I’m not going to turn in yet.”

  “What? Aren’t you tired?”

  “No. I think I’m going to see if I can find something to drink.”

  “Drink tomorrow. I want to go to bed.”

  It is impossible to explain how you can love someone so much that it’s difficult to be around him. And with Percy sitting there, half in shadow, his hair loose and his long legs and those eyes I could have lived and died in, it feels like there’s a space inside me that is so bright it burns.

  “I’ll try not to wake you when I come in,” I say as I unlatch the door behind my back, then slip out into the hall before he can say anything more.

  The house is eerier at night, which I hadn’t thought possible, but poor lighting and long shadows are masters of sinister ambiance. I think about going back into the study where we met Dante, until I remember all the dead things and cursed objects there, and instead shuffle to the front parlor and settle in before the fire, on a leather sofa which is just short enough that I can’t stretch out all the way and just stiff enough that I can’t get comfortable and I am just irritated enough to know I won’t sleep. There’s a decanter on the sideboard with a bottle-collar proclaiming it cognac, but no glasses, so I take a swig straight out of the neck. I haven’t had a drink in a while, but it’s not quite as soothing as I want it to be.

  There are footsteps in the hallway, then a moment later a shadow blots the rug. “I thought I heard you wandering about.”

  I sit up as Felicity makes a very unladylike flop onto the sofa where my legs just were. I offer her the cognac, and she shocks me by accepting it, then taking a delicate sip. Her nose wrinkles. “That’s vile.”

  “It’s not the best I’ve ever had, no.”

  “I don’t think it’s this particular vintage.”

  “It’s an acquired taste.”

  “Why acquire a taste for something so horrid?”

  Something flaps by the window, a black shape torn from the black sky, and Felicity and I both jump. Then we smile sheepishly at each other. “This house is strange,” I say.

  “Yes, but we’re here, aren’t we? They’ve been kind to let us stay. We haven’t any other options.” She takes another tight-lipped sip of the cognac, pulls a spectacular face, then passes it back to me. “Helena’s very pretty.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So? So I thought you’d be slavering over that.”

  “Should I be?”

  “Honestly, Monty, I’ve never quite understood who’s really got a hold on you.”

  “Do you want to know if I’m a bugger?”

  She winces at the crass word, but then says, “It seems a fair question, considering I’ve seen your hands all over Richard Peele and Theodosia Fitzroy.”

  “Oh, dear Theodosia, my girl.” I collapse backward into the sofa cushions. “I remain inconsolable over losing her.” I do not want to talk about this. Especially with my little sister. I came down here for the sole purpose of getting drunk enough to sleep and avoid venturing anywhere near this subject, but Felicity goes on staring at me like she’s waiting for an answer. I take an uncivilized swipe at my mouth with my sleeve, which would have earned me a cuff from Father had we been at home. “Why does it matter who I run around with?”

  “Well, one is illegal. And a sin. And the other is also a sin, if you aren’t married to her.”

  “Are you going to give me the fornication without the intention of procreation is of the devil and a crime lecture? I believe I could recite it from memory by now.”

  “Monty—”

  “Perhaps I am trying to procreate with all these lads and I’m just very misinformed about the whole process. If only Eton hadn’t thrown me out.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “What was the question?”

  “Are you—”

  “Oh yes, am I a sodomite. Well, I’ve been with lads, so . . . yes.”

  She purses her lips, and I wish I hadn’t been so forthright. “If you’d stop, Father might not be so rough on you, you know.”

  “Oh my, thank you for that earth-shattering wisdom. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself.”

  “I’m simply suggesting—”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “—he might ease up.”

  “Well, I haven’t much choice.”

  “Really?” She crosses her arms. “You haven’t a choice in who you bed?”

  “No, I mean I haven’t much choice in who it is I want to bed.”

  “Of course you do. Sodomy’s a vice—same as drinking or gambling.”

  “Not really. I mean, yes, I enjoy it. And I have certainly abstained from abstinence. But I’m also rather attracted to all the men I kiss. And the ladies as well.”

  She laughs, like I’ve made a joke. I don’t. “Sodomy has nothing to do with attraction. It’s an act. A sin.”

  “Not for me.”

  “But humans are made to be attracted to the opposite sex. Not the same one. That’s how nature operates.”

  “Does that make me unnatural?” When she doesn’t reply, I say, “Have you ever fancied anyone?”

  “No. But I believe I understand the basic principles of it.”

  “I don’t think you really can until it’s happened to you.”

  “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Ever fancied someone?”

  “Oh. Well, yes.”

  “Girls?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lads?”

  “Also yes.”

  “Percy?”

  I had felt her winding up to that, but it still catches me on the chin. I don’t say anything, which is answer enough, and she gives me a sideways glance. “Don’t look so surprised. Neither of you is very subtle.”

  “Neither of us?”

  “Well, yes, it does take two. Isn’t Percy—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “Percy is not . . . No.”

  “You mean you’ve never—”

  “No.” I take another long drink. The bottle collar rattles against the neck.

  “Oh. I suppose I assumed, as you lean toward lads and the two of you are always so familiar with each other.”

  “We are not.”

  “You are.”

  “Fine. But I’m like that with a lot of people.”

  “Not like you are with Percy. And he’s certainly not. Percy’s so stoic and polite with everyone but you. And I’ve never kn
own him to be, you know, involved with anyone. Lad or lady.”

  He hasn’t, it occurs to me suddenly. Or if he has, I’ve never been privy to that information. He’s never mentioned being sweet on someone, or spoken of anyone fondly, and for all our junkets, I am the only person I’ve ever known Percy to kiss.

  “Even if it isn’t, you know, romantic,” Felicity goes on, “it’s hard not to see. You’re the kind of pair that makes everyone around them feel as though they’re missing out on a private joke.” We sit still for a minute, neither speaking. The fire pops and flails, spitting out sap. Then she says, “It’s a relief, actually. I wasn’t certain you had it in you to truly care for anyone.”

  I slouch down a little farther and nearly slide right off the sofa. It’s very slick upholstery. “It would have been good if it were someone who wasn’t my best mate. Or someone I could actually be with. Or, you know. A woman.”

  “I thought you liked women too.”

  “I do, sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like Percy more than anyone else.”

  Felicity presses her fingers to her temples. “I’m sorry, Monty, I’m really trying to understand this and I . . . can’t.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t understand it most of the time.”

  “What does Percy think?”

  “Not a clue. Sometimes I think he knows I’m smitten and ignores it. Sometimes I think he’s just thick. Either way, he doesn’t seem to feel the same.”

  “It must be difficult,” she says.

  I want to throw my arms around her for acting as though this conversation is ordinary. But as hard as she’s trying, any more honesty would likely burst her head open. Because Percy goes so deep inside me, like veins of gold grown into granite. I think again about our kiss in Paris. His hand on my knee in the carriage when the highwaymen ambushed us. Lying side by side on the roof of the livery stable. It makes me ache to line them up like that, each of those moments that fall just short of where I wish they would land. “Not very enjoyable, no.”

  “What are your expectations, exactly? If Percy did feel the same way about you, what would happen? You can’t be together. Not like that—you could be killed for it if you were found out. They’ve been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid.”