“Monty,” he says, my name punching its way through a gasp. I don’t reply because I’m far more interested in sucking on his neck than in doing any talking, but he takes my face in his hands and raises it to his. “Wait. Stop.”
I stop. It may be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, though it should be noted I have not had a very hard life. “What is it?” It’s ridiculous how winded I am, like I’ve been running.
Percy looks me dead in the eyes. I’ve still got one hand spread like a starburst on his chest, and his heart is pounding against my fingertips. “Is this just a laugh to you?”
“No,” I say before I can think it through. Then, when his eyes widen a little, I pin on hastily, “Yes. I dunno. What do you want me to say?”
“I want . . . Nothing. Forget it.”
“Well, why’d you stop, you goose?” I think we’ll take up where we left off, so I lean in again, but he ducks out of the way and I freeze, my hand hovering between us.
Then he says, very quietly, “Don’t.”
Which is not a particularly fine thing to hear when I’ve still got one hand down his trousers.
I don’t move right away—give him a moment to change his mind and come back to me, though it’s clear from his expression that I’m fooling myself in thinking he will. It’s a fight to keep my face straight, pretend I don’t have years’ worth of wanting attached to this excellent kiss with the most gorgeous boy I know, but I manage to say, “Fine,” without giving away how much that single word feels like the trapdoor of a scaffold falling out from under me.
Percy looks up. “Really? Fine?” he repeats. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Fine by me.” I shove him off my lap, which is what I think I would probably do if this were a laugh, but it’s harder than I mean to and he falls. “You started it. You and your daft poem.”
“Right, of course.” Suddenly he sounds angry. He’s fiddling with the buttons of his breeches, refastening them with more force than necessary. “This is my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was your fault, Perce, I said you started it.”
“Well, you wanted it too.”
“Too? I wanted it too?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t. And I really don’t care. God, it was just a kiss!”
“Right, I forgot you’ll kiss anything with a mouth.” Percy picks himself up with a bit of a stumble and winces.
I reach out, even though I’m too far away to help. “You all right?”
“You just shoved me and now you’re asking if I’m all right?”
“I’m trying to be decent.”
“I think you missed that chance a long while ago.”
“God, Perce, why are you being such a prick?”
“Let’s go home.”
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”
And so we conclude what might have been a fireworks-and-poetry sort of evening with the most uncomfortable walk home ever shared by any two people in history.
5
I do a valiant job of ignoring Percy for the next few days. He keeps his distance as well—I can’t decide if he’s avoiding me or just giving me space to cool off—though not so far that I don’t notice the rather telling mark on his neck that his collars aren’t quite high enough to cover. It’s a fine reminder of the most mortifying thing I’ve ever done.
I don’t claim a perfect record when it comes to romantic advances, but Percy’s rejection stings like salt in an open wound. It plays in my head for days, over and over no matter how hard I try to shake it off or console myself with the memory of how good it felt before it all fell apart. My attempts to scrub it out with whiskey lifted from our kitchen do no good either. I keep hearing that single word—don’t—and reliving the moment he pushed me away.
Lots of boys mess around at that age. I can still hear my father saying it, and it feels like a kick in the teeth every time. Lots of boys mess around. Especially when it’s late and they’re mauled and far from home.
I stay comfortably drunk for the next few days, perhaps toeing the line between comfortably and deliriously, for I forget entirely that my father arranged for us to accompany Lord Ambassador Worthington to Versailles for a summer ball until Lockwood announces it over breakfast in a voice that implies I’m an imbecile for forgetting. But it is, however temporary, a distraction from thinking of Percy. And Lockwood won’t be coming, so it might be a properly good evening.
Felicity seems to be laboring under the delusion that she will not be required to attend, in spite of the fact that she shopped for outfitting alongside Percy and me when we first arrived. She gives an unconvincing performance of nondescript unwellness, and seems shocked when Lockwood is unmoved. When she finally agrees to dress, she emerges from her room looking as though she’s put the least effort possible into it. She’s in the French gown tailored for her, which was rather matronly to begin with, but no cosmetics and her hair is in the same twisted plait she’s worn it in all day. She hasn’t even washed the ink off her fingers—the remnants of some scribblings she’s been doing in the margins of her novel. Her maid follows, looking cowed.
Lockwood gives a dramatic sucking-in of the cheeks, paired with an equally dramatic tapping of the foot, as he surveys her. Felicity folds her arms and surveys him straight back. She’s a fierce, stubborn creature when she wants to be, and, I begrudgingly allow, it can be glorious.
“It seems,” Lockwood says at last, “that the three of you all lack an understanding of the reality of your positions.”
“The reality is, I don’t see the point in me being made to attend tonight,” Felicity says. “I’ve asked to go to see the galleries with you and Monty and Percy and hear the lectures, but you—”
“Well, for a start, I must say I find it inappropriate how informal you are with each other,” Lockwood interrupts. “From now on, I’d like to hear you address one another properly—no given names, please, or these pet names of which you seem fond.”
I nearly burst out laughing at that. I can’t imagine calling Percy Mr. Newton with a straight face, nor can I see Felicity doing the same—Percy’s around so often they might as well be siblings. They certainly get on better than she and I do. Though I’m rather cheered by the thought of Felicity being made to address me as my lord.
Lockwood catches my grin before I can pocket it and pivots his sights. “And you. Such blatant disregard for one’s own privilege, I have never witnessed. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? I joined the navy, risking my life for king and country. I did not have the chance or the means to take a tour of the Continent, and here you are handed that opportunity at no personal sacrifice and you squander it.”
Well, this situation certainly got away from me. I don’t see why it’s me getting the lecture when it’s only Felicity being belligerent.
“And”—Lockwood turns to Percy, seems to decide there’s nothing about him that’s really worth getting worked up over, and moves back to a collective address—“be forewarned that I will have very little patience for further antics from any of you. Am I understood?”