“We’re late” is all Felicity says in reply—which we are. Lockwood is immediately flustered, calling for our footman and ushering us to the door, our departure so hasty that Felicity isn’t made to clean up. Which is unfair.
“You’ll be the talk of the evening in that rig,” I say to her as I offer her my hand into the carriage. “Tell me, is that actual sackcloth, or simply plain muslin?”
“Well, you’ve enough frills for the both of us,” she replies, ignoring my hand. “You’ll put the ladies to shame.”
I resist the urge to rip some of the ruched trim off the mint-colored coat I had until this moment thought was quite handsome. My little sister has inherited from my father the knack for making me a self-conscious fool about everything.
“I think you look nice,” Percy tells me, which makes me want to throw something at him. He’s got on an indigo coat with a flowered brocade along the cuffs and velvet breeches to match. It isn’t fair that we’re quarreling and he still looks so goddamn fantastic.
We meet the lord ambassador and his wife at the palace gates. He’s a tall fellow with a gray buckle-rolled wig, and he has a sword hanging from his belt. His wife is short and stout, though her hair makes her nearly as tall as he is. She’s powdered pale as milk, a distinct rim at her hairline that the cone missed, with too much rouge overtop and a pox patch beneath each eye. In their poor imitation of French fashion, they look like pastries in a bakery window at the end of the day, trying a bit too hard to be beautiful as they wilt.
“Lord Disley.” The lord ambassador gives me a firm handshake when we meet, with one hand on my elbow like he’s trying to buckle me to his side. It’s a bit of an effort to pry my way out. “Well met, my lord, very well met. I’ve heard . . . so much about you from your father.”
Which starts the evening off on a remarkably sour note.
The lord ambassador ignores Percy when he gives his hand, instead offering up a critical and not at all subtle up-and-down before he turns to Felicity. “And Miss Montague. You look so very like your mother. Such a lovely woman. You’ll be so lovely someday.”
Felicity frowns, like she’s trying to work out whether or not what he said was a jab. I’m not certain either, though that frown is doing nothing for the case of her current loveliness.
“Oh, stop that, Robert, she’s already gorgeous,” his wife says, which seems to make Felicity even more uncomfortable. Lady Worthington takes her by the arm and makes her spin once, which Felicity executes with halting steps, like she isn’t entirely certain what is happening but is quite certain she doesn’t like it. “What an interesting dress,” the lord ambassador’s wife remarks, and I can’t resist a snort at that one. Worthington frowns at me. So does Percy, which is far more annoying.
As one lady coos and the other reluctantly allows herself to be cooed at, the lord ambassador takes me aside and says in a confidential whisper, “Your . . . Who is that, precisely?” He nods to Percy, who is doing a rather obvious pantomime of not eavesdropping.
“My friend,” I reply flatly. “He’s my friend.”
“Does your father know? He didn’t mention you’d be bringing . . .”
“Percy’s traveling with me,” I say. “We’re touring together.”
“Oh. Oh, of course. Mr. Newton.” The note of surprise in his voice is as blatant as a battle-ax as he turns to Percy. “I know your uncle.”
“Do you?” Percy asks.
“Yes, old friends. He had just been appointed to the admiralty court when I was still a merchant out of Liverpool. He never mentioned he had a ward that was . . .” He drifts off, pumping his hand in a circle like he might waft an appropriate ending to that sentence our way, then instead says, “You’ve been in Paris since May, have you? How do you find it?”
When I don’t answer, Percy steps in. “Very interesting.”
“Such a fine, fine city, Paris. Though we find the food to be rather less than to our taste. The food is better in London.”
“But the beds are better in Paris,” I say.
“Shall we go in?” Percy says quickly.
The lord ambassador’s eyes narrow a bit at me, then he claps my shoulder before leading us up the drive. I jog to catch him up before Percy can fall into step beside me.
Versailles is a delirious fantasy of a place. We cross through a card room and into the mirrored hall where the king receives his court, every surface not covered with a looking glass gilded in gold or frescoed in jewel tones. Wax drips in hot, sticky threads from the chandeliers. The light is pyrite, with snowflakes of color refracted through the crystals splattering the walls.
The party spills into the gardens, the air hot and hazy with pollen rising from the flowers in golden bursts when they’re brushed. Hedges line the walks, carved into a menagerie of shapes, roses bursting between them. The stars are stifled by the furious light from the palace, and the candelabra lining the stairs are reflected like glittering coins against the bright silk everyone is wearing. People mill along the paths and beneath the open dome at the center of the Orangerie, foamy blossoms and soft-tongued orchids pressing their leaves against the glass like hands. The women are stuffed into skirts supported by panniers that make them as wide as they are tall, and everyone’s hair is powdered and curled and pasted into sculptural rigidity. Percy and I are two of the only men who aren’t wigged. My hair grows so thick and dark and ruffles so handsomely that I refuse to cover it until it ceases to be all or any of those things.
No one takes notice of our announcement. The atmosphere is already far too feverish.
The ambassador’s wife peels Felicity away from us, leaving Percy and me to her husband. I try to wander away to secure both a drink and someone to make eyes at across the crowd that I can promise will end with someone’s trousers off. But Worthington sticks closer to me than I would like, making introductions to a parade of nobles who all look the same in their wigs and powder and forcing me to be a spectator to polite conversation about the poet Voltaire’s exile to England, whether bachelors should be made to pay higher taxes, the broken-off engagement between the boy king of France and the Spanish infanta and what that means for relations between the houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon.
This is going to be the rest of your life, says a small voice in the back of my head.
I’ve never been good at feigning sincerity, or pretending to be keen on things I’m not, and I haven’t a clue what to say to these people. I’m accustomed to spending parties like this either mucking about with Percy or drinking until I’ve found someone else to muck about with, but Percy’s being annoying and the lord ambassador has a nasty habit of waving servers with the wine and champagne away. I finally manage to get my hand around a glass, but when I try to have it refilled, he puts his hand over the top, never breaking eye contact with the lady he’s speaking to. I survive the rest of the conversation by imagining taking my empty coupe and shoving it either down his throat or up his arse.
“I hear you have a bit of a problem,” he says to me as the other half of his conversation wafts away. “Excess is not flattering, young man.”
I’d take sloppy drunk over dull and restrained any day, though saying that aloud doesn’t seem likely to aid in the refilling of my glass.