“Bonsoir, ambassadeur,” the duke replies, hardly bothering to make eye contact. “You look well.”
“Always a pleasure. A fine evening, as is usually had here. How good to see you. Not that it’s a surprise. Of course you’re here.” Bourbon looks as though he’d like to sidle away from this conversation, though the ambassador seems equally as desperate to keep him anchored. “Will His Majesty be in attendance?”
“His Majesty remains indisposed,” the duke replies.
“A shame. We all pray for his swift recovery, as always. May I present Lord Henry Montague, Viscount of Disley, recently arrived from England?”
Just try, says Percy’s voice in my head. I give the duke the most sincere smile I can muster, dimples employed for fullest effect, and offer him the same small bow the ambassador did. It feels like a strange imitation, a stage version of the way I’ve seen other men behave. “It’s a pleasure.”
“The pleasure is mine,” he says, his tone noticeably absent of any pleasure as he wraps me in a stare that could pin a man to the wall. “You’re Henri Montague’s eldest?”
Always a hideous place to start, but I keep that luminous smile fixed. “Yes.”
“Henry is touring,” the ambassador says, like that might somehow open a conversational door, but the duke ignores him and keeps that calculating gaze fixed upon me. It raises the hairs on the back of my neck. He’s not a tall fellow, but he’s solid, and I’m neither of those things. In that steel-tipped stare of his, I feel significantly smaller than usual.
“How fares your father of late?” he asks.
“Ah, yes.” The ambassador gives a fluttery laugh. He’s fiddling with his sleeve links. “Your father is French, isn’t he, Disley? I’d forgotten.”
“Are the two of you close?” the duke asks.
I can feel fat drops of sweat, sticky with my hair pomade, rolling down the back of my neck. “I wouldn’t say close.”
“Do you see much of him?”
“Well, not lately, as we’ve the English Channel between us.” I give myself a bit of a hat-tip for that—clever, but not impertinent. I might not be as terrible at this as I thought.
The duke doesn’t smile. “Are you mocking me?”
Worthington makes a sound that’s rather like choking.
“No,” I say quickly. “No, not at all. It was a jest—”
“At my expense.”
“It was the way you said it—”
“Is there something wrong with the way I speak?”
“No, I . . .” I look between them. The ambassador is staring at me with his jaw unhinged. “Would you like me to explain it?”
The duke’s frown goes deeper. “Do you think I’m an imbecile?”
Dear God, what is happening? This conversation is suddenly a wriggling fish between my fingers and I’m losing my grip. “I think we’ve misstepped somewhere,” I say, offering my best apologetic smile. “You were asking about my father.”
The duke doesn’t return it. “I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread.”
I slump a few inches nearer to the ground. “Sorry.”
“Your father has a pointed sense of humor. Clearly you take after him.”
“Do I?” I look between him and the ambassador again, though neither seems willing to come to my rescue. “What do you mean, pointed sense of humor?”
“Would you like me to explain it?” the duke replies, a bitter mimic.
The best strategy seems to be fleeing back to the summit of this tangential peak and pretending we never scaled it, so I say, “I was seeing a great deal of my father before I left for the Continent. My mother’s just had a child and that’s kept him at home.”
“Ah.” The duke fishes a silver vinaigrette from his pocket and takes a grand sniff. “The last I heard, he was staying more at his estate to keep an eye upon a delinquent son who enjoyed drinking and boys more than he did his studies at Eton.”
All the color drains out of my face. A few people glance our way, key phrases in his statement catching gossip-hungry ears. The duke gives me a cool expression, and I’m quite ready to either overturn a table or do a dramatic collapse to the ground. Perhaps both in quick succession. Look, see! I would shout at Percy if he were here beside me. This is what happens when I try.
Ambassador Worthington makes a verbal hurdle between us. “This is Henri Montague’s son,” he offers, as though there’s been some kind of mistake.
“Yes, I know,” the duke replies. Then, back to me, he says, “And by all reports I’ve heard, he’s a scoundrel.”
“Well, at least I’ve not been dismissed from my position as lapdog to an invalidic puppet of a king,” I snap.
The duke’s smugness slips like a poorly laced mask. For the first time since the start of our egregious interaction, he seems to be considering something other than making me look a fool, though this thing seems to be whether it would be appropriate to strangle me with his bare hands in the middle of mixed company. “Watch that tongue, Montague,” he says, his voice low and coiled, a poisonous snake lurking in the tall grass. Then he snaps his vinaigrette shut and stalks away, leaving the ambassador and me both staring after him like wax figures of ourselves.
My ears are still ringing—I’m unsure whether my father is going out of his way to speak badly of me to all his intimates and make a real meal of my humiliation, or whether I’ve such a foul reputation that the stench has preceded me here. And what’s worse, I’m not sure which of those options is preferable.
Worthington’s face is still stuck in its mask of polite society when he turns to me, but the steam coming out his ears is nearly palpable. I expect a stuttered secondhand apology, some sort of gasping and fawning and poor Monty, I’m so terribly sorry he said such hateful things to you.
Instead he says to me, very calmly, “How dare you speak to him like that.”
Which is when I realize he isn’t on my side either.
“Did you hear what he said to me?” I demand.
“He is your better.”
“I don’t care if he’s the bleeding king, he insulted—”
Worthington reaches suddenly for me, and my hands fly up, an involuntary defense. But all he does is place his palm upon my arm in an almost pitying way and say, “When your father wrote to request I make your introductions, I had it in my head he was exaggerating about your lack of moral fortitude, but I see he’s been rather astute in his assessment. Now, I believe your father to be a first-rate fellow, so I place no responsibility upon him. He’s no doubt done the best he could, yet sometimes the tares fall among the wheat. But this devil-may-care attitude you believe so charming, tossing your social connections into the fire and instead choosing to associate with colored men such as your Mr. Newton—”
“Let’s get something straight,” I interrupt, jerking my arm out of his grip with such force that I nearly knock out the woman standing behind me. “You are not my father, I am not your responsibility, and I did not come here to have a list of my faults related from him or be condemned for who I associate with—not by you or that damned duke. So while it’s been a jolly good time, being treated like a child all evening, I think I’ve just about had enough and I can make my own way from here.”