Even Paris itself is a cruel mistress—it’s a shithole of a place, with more people crammed into it than seems possible and truly incredible traffic. Twice as many carriages and handcarts and sedans crowd the streets as in London, and there are no footpaths to speak of. The buildings are taller than in London as well, the lanes weaving them together narrow, their stones weathered and slick. Sewage falls from the windows as chamber pots are tossed, and the gutters fester with it, great mastiff dogs roaming feral through them.
But Lockwood is aggravatingly delighted by the filthy enchantment of it all, and everyone else in our little band seems to be enjoying themselves with all this art and culture and the seeing of historical sights, and I start to wonder if perhaps I’m just too stupid to do the same.
Three weeks in, Percy and I still haven’t managed to escape the eye of our tyrant cicerone for a night out on our own. There’s hardly an evening we aren’t dragged to readings and concerts and even the goddamn opera (though not the theater, which Lockwood tells us is breeding ground for sodomites and fops, and as such sounds more to my taste), which, paired with the early mornings, leave me too worn down to work up much excitement for midnight outings. The first nocturnal excursion we’re blessedly excused from is a scientific lecture Lockwood badgers us to attend, entitled “The Synthetic Panacea: An Alchemical Hypothesis,” but Percy pleads an afternoon headache and I plead being entirely occupied with watching him have said headache, and Lockwood seems to trust Percy’s word over mine.
Instead of our usual communal meal in the dining room, we all sup at intervals. Percy and I take the meal in his room and then lie tangled upon his bed, drowsy and languid as the sky turns bruise-colored with sunset and smoke. The first time I rise all evening is to see if I can bully one of the staff into giving me some whiskey for his ague and my enjoyment. The lanterns haven’t been lit yet, and the hallway is so shadowy that I nearly smash into Felicity, who is pressed up against the wall with her shoes in her hand, wearing a plain Brunswick with the hood pulled up, like a bandit come to lift the silver.
I’ve done enough sneaking out in my lifetime to know precisely what she’s up to.
She starts when she sees me, and clutches her boots to her chest. “What are you doing?” she hisses.
“I could ask you the same,” I reply, far louder than is needed, and she flails a hand. In the sitting room, I hear Lockwood clear his throat. “Trying to escape undetected, are we?”
“Please don’t tell.”
“Are you meeting a boy? Or perhaps a man? Or have you been passing your nights as one of those dancing girls with the scarlet garters?”
“If you say one word to Lockwood,” she says, her face scrunched up, “I’ll tell him it was you who drank that bottle of port that he missed last week.”
Now it’s my turn to scrunch up my face, which isn’t a good look for me. Felicity crosses her arms, and I cross mine, and we regard each other through the shadows, stalemated. Blackmail is aggravating in normal circumstances, but far worse when it’s coming from a younger sister.
“Fine, I’ll keep quiet,” I say.
Felicity smiles, eyebrows sloping to a positively nefarious angle. “Lovely. Now be a good lad and go distract Lockwood for me so he won’t hear the door. Perhaps ask him to tell you something long and loud about Gothic architecture.”
“They’re going to throw you out of school if you behave this way.”
“Well, it took Eton years to catch on to your larks, and I’m a fair amount cleverer, so I’m not concerned.” She smiles again, and in that moment, all my childhood instincts come out, for I’d like nothing better than to give her hair a good tug. “Enjoy your evening,” she says, then glides to the door, stocking-footed on the stone so she hardly needs lift her feet.
Lockwood is settled in an armchair before the fireplace, unwigged, with a banyan loose over his waistcoat. He looks up when I enter and his brow creases, as though the sight of me alone is cause for consternation. “My lord. May I help you?”
Out in the hallway, I hear the soft click of the front latch.
And if Felicity is sneaking out, it’s about damn time Percy and I did so as well. “I think we’ll be attending that lecture tonight after all,” I say.
“Oh. Oh!” He sits up. “You and Mr. Newton both?”
“Yes,” I say, offering Percy an internal apology in case his headache was real. “We’ll get a coach to Montparnasse, so you needn’t come—you’re nearly dressed for bed. And we might have some supper after. So don’t wait up.”
And bless his little cotton socks, he must truly believe in the transformative power travel can have over a young man, because he swallows it.
As it turns out, it’s hardly even a lie—we do get a coach to Montparnasse, and we do have supper. It consists of a pint of baptized beer downed standing up in the corner of a smoky boxing ring, then spirits at a music hall after.
The boxing is my choice, the music hall Percy’s—his condition for coming out with me in spite of the headache that was apparently very much real was that at least half of the evening would be spent somewhere men weren’t brutalizing one another and we can hear each other without shouting. But the music hall is packed and nearly as loud as the fights. The walls are plastered in moldering velvet and golden fringe, the ceiling painted with an elaborate mural of cherubs frolicking with naked women in foamy clouds—the cherubs seem to be there purely to keep it from being pornographic. Candles on the tables—sheathed in red glass—rouge the light.
We spend our fights’ winnings on one of the private boxes in the top gallery, looking down upon the crowd and above the haze of pipe smoke. Tournaments of backgammon and faro are being played all about, shouts going up over piquet and lottery, but Percy and I keep only each other’s company. It’s bleeding hot with so many people packed so tight, and the box is private enough that we both shuck down to our shirtsleeves.
We finish near a Scotch pint of spirits between us before the interlude—Percy’s drinking more than he usually does and it’s making him giggly. I’m feeling it too—giddy and bold, coquettish at being out and alone in Paris with him and sitting on a belly of gin and warm whiskey.
Percy leans over from his chair to rest his chin upon my shoulder, one of his feet brushing my shin as it bounces in time to the music. “Having fun?”
I give a nip at his ear—meant to just lean in, but I misjudge the distance and decide halfway there to commit to it. He yelps in surprise. “No, but you are.”
Music is not an art I claim to understand or enjoy, but Percy looks so happy in that moment that I feel happy too, a sudden swell of delight to be alive and here with him. Though snatching at the heels of that is the thought of the hourglass attached to these last days before Percy and I part. Our Tour suddenly seems like an impossibly short time.
For a moment, I toy with the idea that, at the end of it all, I could not go home. Run away to Holland with Percy. Or perhaps just run. Which would leave me stuck with nothing. No money and no skills to earn it. I’m too useless to make a life on my own, no matter how odious the one selected for me is. I’m well shackled to my father, no way to escape or want things for myself.