“When have I ever embarrassed you?” I murmur.
As soon as I say it, I can feel us both riffle through our mental libraries for each incident in which I shamed my father. It’s an extensive catalogue. Neither of us says any of it aloud, though. Not with Mr. Lockwood here.
Lockwood chooses to take a clumsy hack through the awkward silence by pretending it doesn’t exist. “From Paris, we continue on to Marseilles, where we will deliver your sister, Miss Montague, for school. I have accommodation arranged as far as there. We will winter in Italy—I have suggested Venice, Florence, and Rome, and your father concurs—then either Geneva or Berlin, depending upon the snowfall in the Alps. On our return, we will collect your sister, and the two of you will be home for the summer. Mr. Newton will make his own way to Holland for school.”
The air in the room is hot, and it’s making me feel petulant. Or perhaps I’m entitled to a little petulance because this whole lecture seems a bit of a sour send-off and I’m still rather panicked over the fact that at the end of all this, Percy’s going to bloody law school in bloody Holland and I’m going to be properly apart from him for the first time in my life.
But then Father gives me a frostbitten look, and I drop my gaze. “Fine.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Father stares hard at me, his hands folded before him. For a moment, none of us speaks. Outside on the drive, one of the footmen scolds a groom to step lively. A mare nickers.
“Mr. Lockwood,” Father says, “may I have a moment alone with my son?”
As one, my muscles all clench in anticipation.
On his way to the door, Mr. Lockwood pauses at my side and gives me a short clap on the shoulder that’s so firm it makes me start. I was expecting a swing to come from entirely the opposite direction and be significantly less friendly. “We’re going to have an excellent time, my lord,” he says. “You will hear poetry and symphonies and see the finest treasures the world has to offer. It will be a cultural experience that will shape the remainder of your life.”
Dear. Lord. Fortune has well and truly vomited down my front in the form of Mr. Lockwood.
As Lockwood closes the door, Father reaches toward me and I flinch, but he’s only going for the brandy on the sideboard, moving it out of my grasp. God, I’ve got to get my head on straight.
“This is the last chance I’m giving you, Henry,” he says, a bit of the old French accent peeping through, as it always does when his temper is rising. Those soft edges on his vowels are usually my first warning, and I almost put my hands up preemptively. “When you return home, we’ll start in on the estate work. Together. You’ll come to London with me and observe the duties of a lord there. And if you can’t return to us mature enough for that, then don’t come back at all. There’ll be no place left for you in this family or any of our finances. You’ll be out.”
Right on schedule, the disinheritance rears its ugly head. But after years of holding it over me—clean up, sober up, stop letting lads climb in through your bedroom window at night or else—for the first time, we both know he means it. Because until a few months ago, if it wasn’t me who got the estate, he’d have had no one to pass it to that would keep it in the family.
Upstairs, the Goblin begins to wail.
“Indicate that you understand me, Henry,” Father snaps, and I force myself to meet his eyes again.
“Yes, sir. I understand you.”
He lets loose a long sigh, paired with the thin-lipped disappointment of a man who’s just seen the unrecognizable results of a commissioned portrait of himself. “I hope you one day have a son that’s as much of a leech as you are. Now, you’ve a coach waiting.”
I fly to my feet, ready to be rid of this sweltering room. But before I get far, he calls, “One final thing.” I turn back with the hope we might speak from a distance, but he crooks a finger until I consent to return to his side. He casts a glance at the door, though Lockwood is long gone, then says to me in a low voice, “If I catch even a whiff of you mucking around with boys, while you’re away or once you return, you’ll be cut off. Permanently. No further conversation about it.”
And that is our farewell in its entirety.
Out of doors, the sun still feels like a personal affront. The air is steamy, a ferric storm beginning to conspire at the horizon. The hedges along our drive sparkle where the dew sits, leaves turned to the light and shivering when the wind runs through them. The gravel crunches as the horses paw at it, harnessed and anxious to depart.
Percy is already at the carriage, his back to the house, which allows me an unobserved moment of staring at his arse—not that it’s particularly noteworthy arse, but it’s Percy’s, which is what makes it very much worth the noting. He’s directing one of the porters loading the last of our luggage that wasn’t sent ahead. “I’ll keep it with me,” he’s saying, his arms extended.
“There’s room to stow it, sir.”
“I know. I’d rather have it with me is all.”
The porter surrenders and hands Percy his fiddle case, the only relic left him by his father, which he cuddles like he was concerned they’d never see each other again.
“Have your aunt and uncle gone?” I call as I cross the drive toward him and he looks up from stroking his fiddle case.
“Yes, we had a chaste farewell. What did your father want?”
“Oh, the usual. Told me not to break too many hearts.” I rub my temples. A headache is building to a boil behind my eyes. “Christ, it’s bright. Are we off soon?”
“There’s your mother and Felicity.” Percy nods in the direction of the front steps, where the pair of them are silhouetted against the white stone like they’re fashioned from cut paper. “You’d best say good-bye.”
“Kiss for good luck?”
I lean in, but Percy puts the fiddle case between us with a laugh. “Good try, Monty.”
Hard not to let that pinch.
Felicity is looking sour and unattractive as usual, with her face scrunched up against the sun. She’s got the bridge specs tucked down the front of her Brunswick—Mother might not have noticed, but I can see the imprint of the chain through the fabric. Barely five and ten and she already looks like a spinster.
“Please,” Mother is saying to her, though Felicity’s staring into the sun like she’s more interested in going blind than in taking maternal counsel. “I don’t want letters from the school about you.”
The finishing school has been a long time coming, but Felicity is still so scowly about it you’d think she hadn’t spent all her born days proving to my parents that if one of their children needed civilizing, it was she. Contrary thing that she is, she’s begged for an education for years, and now that it’s finally handed to her, she’s dug in her heels like a stubborn mule.
Mother opens her arms. “Felicity, come kiss me good-bye.”
“I’d rather not,” Felicity replies, and stalks down the steps toward the carriage.
My mother sighs through her nose, but lets her go. Then she turns to me. “You’ll write.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t drink too much.”