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?”
“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.”