The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy Read online

  “I’ll show myself to Miss Hoffman’s rooms,” I say, and slink away.

  There is a unique sort of agony to entering a party alone.

  It is the shuffle in, the survey, trying to spot allies and cracks in the fortress of guests where you might slide into a conversation with such ease that they will think you’ve been there all the while. It is the keen pinch of hanging in the doorway and knowing that people have seen you come in but no one is pulling you over to their conversation or waving in greeting. Wondering if you can sidle up to the fringes of a conversation and laugh at just the right moment and they’ll part.

  It is an even more pernicious pain when it comes upon the heels of the social equivalent of vomiting partially digested entrails upon my idol.

  Johanna’s apartments are swarming with women from dinner, all with waists tinier and hair taller than mine. The aroma of scent bags and a garden of fragrances crowd the air. I haven’t any powder on—I never wore it at my parents’ house unless a maid managed to catch me off guard and blow a puff in my face—and my skin feels garishly ruddy and freckled in the presence of these girls dusted pale as icing sugar with tiny pox patches spotting their cheeks. Their maids trail them, rearranging trains when they sit upon the silk couches, fetching them flutes of champagne, using a single finger wetted by a tongue to fix a smear of rouge.

  There are card tables, where whist and faro are being dealt. Another table is laid with bonbons, silky pink entremets topped with chocolate flakes sculpted like sparrows, gingerbread, and salted toffees wrapped with spun sugar as fragile and translucent as the wings of a dragonfly, along with bottles of champagne and a pot of spiced wine.

  Johanna is both literally and figuratively in the center of it all, talking to a small crowd of girls while others wait their turn to kiss her cheeks and offer her their congratulations. She drinks champagne and talks with her hands and speaks in arias. She wiggles her shoulders, points her tiny, perfect feet, sucks in her cheeks to make her face look thinner.

  It aggravates me, in the same way it did back in Cheshire, but not because she’s putting on a party persona. It’s because she’s so bloody good at it.

  From his spot at the buffet table, Max galumphs over to me, an enormous pink silk bow around his neck. He smashes his forehead into my knees until I consent to massage his ears, then he walks over to the dessert table again and sits with an expectant look, as though greeting me has made him worthy of a treat.

  I almost bolt. I want nothing more than to run back to my room and hide in a book the same way I have always done in the face of these gatherings.

  But I’m trying to make an impression. I’m trying to pretend I am an indoor cat. I am trying to get to Dr. Platt, and since my impression was so disastrous, the best way to do that will be through Johanna.

  You are Felicity Montague, I remind myself. You had your brother tackled into the London harbor and found Alexander Platt and are absolutely going to make up for that embarrassing incident earlier.

  Since the knot of women around Johanna is too intimidating to breach just yet, I take a tentative seat on a couch near the door, next to a woman who looks a little older than me. She catches my eye and gives me an obligatory smile over her champagne. I look away, am then mortified that was my reaction to being smiled at, and say too loudly and without introduction, “I like your eyebrows.”

  I had spun a mental wheel and picked the least flattering feature to compliment a woman on. She looks surprised. As any person would at such a bizarre statement so loudly uttered. “Oh. Thank you.” She purses her lips, looks me up and down, then says, “Yours are also nice.”

  “Yes.” I stare at her for a moment longer. Then I nod too vigorously. Then I ask, “How many bones in the human body can you name?” And dear Lord, what is happening to me? Why don’t I know how to talk politely to other women? “Excuse me.”

  I flee to the food, take up a glass of spiced wine, and think about a pastry as well but decide I’d rather not risk spilling something down my front. There’s a knot of women standing by the dressing room staring at me, and when I look back at them, they all duck and giggle, and I hate these girls. I hate them so much. I hate the way they giggle, and look at me when I don’t, and then it feels as though I’m being laughed at and they’re all in on it and I’m not. It’s my whole childhood, being sneered at by watery girls for a joke I didn’t understand because I was reading books they could never understand.

  For a woman who boasts that she doesn’t give a fig what anyone thinks of her, I certainly have a lot of party-related anxiety.

  Max seats himself upon my hem and looks up at me with his drooping eyes. The white spots above them make him look grotesquely expressive. “You have very nice eyebrows,” I tell him, and give him a flat-handed pat to the head. He licks his lips, then goes on staring at my glass. Of course, the moment I get around other females my own age, I end up socializing with the dog.

  “Well, don’t you look aggressively miserable,” someone says, and I turn. Johanna has extricated herself from her harem and come to stand beside me at the window. Max leans into her, his tail thumping happily between her backside and mine.

  “It’s a nice party,” I say.

  “It is,” she replies, reaching down to massage Max’s head. “So why do you look like you’re having your teeth pulled? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m just . . .” I consider lying. Saying I’m tired from my trip or ate something at supper that didn’t agree with me. But a strange sort of instinct sets in when I meet her eyes. I used to tell Johanna everything. “I’m so bad at this,” I say.

  “At what?”

  “This.” I flap a general hand at the room full of women. “Talking to girls and socializing and being normal.”

  “You’re normal.”

  “I’m not.” I feel like a wild animal in a menagerie, ragged and feral and unsocialized among all these women who don’t tip over in heels or itch the powder off their face. As Sim proclaimed, a crocodile in a cage full of swans. “I’m prickly and off-putting and odd and not always nice.”

  Johanna takes a macaron from the buffet table and licks a dab of filling off her finger. “No one’s good at these things.”

  “Everyone here is.”

  “Everyone is faking it,” she says. “Most of these women don’t know each other—they likely all feel just as misplaced and awkward as you.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Well, it’s my party.”

  “But you’re good at this,” I say. “You always have been. That’s why people liked you back home, and not me. Girls like me are meant to have books instead of friends.”

  “Why can’t you have both?” She takes a bite of her macaron, then tosses the rest to Max, who, in spite of how large an area his mouth covers, misses it entirely and has to chase it down under the table. “I think you need to give people a chance. Including yourself.” She reaches out and puts a light hand on my elbow. “Promise me you’ll stay tonight and at least try to have a good time.”

  I run my tongue along my teeth, then let out a sigh through my nose. I feel like I owe this to her. And also am completely maddened by that. I do not enjoy being beholden, so perhaps it’s best if I pay off this debt as quickly as possible. “Must I?”

  “And you have to talk to at least three people.”

  “All right, you’re one.”

  “Three people you don’t already know. Max does not count,” she says, reading my mind.

  “If I talk to three people, may I then leave?”

  Her head cants to the side, and I can’t tell if her smile actually saddens or if it’s simply the angle. “Are you really that desperate to be away from me?”

  I look away, to our reflections in the glass, made black by the darkness. It feels like looking through a window into a shadow version of ourselves, the girls who could have existed if Johanna and I hadn’t fought. Maybe, if things had gone differently, I’d be here as an attendant at her wedding, invite
d and wanted and not kicking my feet in the corner. Or maybe we’d neither of us be here. Maybe we’d have run away together long ago, gone to find her mother who had left her and her father when she was a child, or found a world of our own, away from all of this.

  “Miss Johanna!” someone calls, and we turn as a very blond, very pretty girl with a very narrow waist comes over to us. She wraps an arm around Johanna’s stomach from behind and cuddles into her neck. Max leans into them both. The girl looks up at me with enormous blue eyes. “Who’s this?”

  “This is my friend Felicity Montague,” Johanna replies. “We grew up together.”

  “Oh, in England? You’ve come from so far!” The girl holds out her hand to me over Johanna’s shoulder. “Christina Gottschalk.”

  With her hand in front of her stomach and out of Christina’s sight, Johanna holds up a single finger and mouths to me, That’s one. I almost laugh.

  Christina gives me a smile I’m not sure I believe is genuine, then turns her face back up to Johanna. “I have to give you a scolding.”

  “Me?” Johanna presses a hand to her breasts. “Why?”

  “Your Dr. Platt about scared my poor girl to death last night.”

  A conversation I was about to be forced to tolerate has just become sincerely interesting to me, as it involves Platt. Perhaps I’ll actually be quite good at socializing after all. “What happened?” I ask.

  “My maid went last night to fetch me milk, and he gave her a terrible scare!” Christina says. “He was up in the library at god-knows-what hour pacing and jabbering to himself. Said he started to shout at her for creeping about.”

  Johanna runs a finger around the rim of her glass. She does not look at all thrilled by this conversation topic. “Yes, he’s a bit manic when he’s dosed.”

  “That’s the peril of marrying a genius, isn’t it?” Christina says. “They’re either depressingly gloomy or terribly insane. Sometimes both at once.”

  “Is he often in the library?” I ask.

  Johanna’s eyes narrow at me—she knows exactly the game I’m playing but won’t give it a name in front of her friend. “He works late and sleeps late; it’s his way. We don’t see him until supper most days.”

  “And not even supper today,” Christina says, which is perhaps meant to make Johanna feel better, but instead has her sucking in her cheeks again.

  If Dr. Platt is hanging about the Hoffman library alone each night, that will give me the perfect opportunity to chat with him, without butlers or gentlemen or my inability to have articulate conversations with no warning getting in the way.

  But Johanna has me trapped, both in this conversation, which is turning to a discussion of melon water in comparison to cucumber for a smooth complexion, and by my promise to speak to three new people. There has to be a way to create a good reason to slip away and position myself in wait for Dr. Platt without wasting time making good on that promise.

  So the next time Max knocks into me, I use it as an excuse to empty my wineglass down my front.

  I only intend for it to be a dribble, a small splatter that would give me enough reason to say I just have to run back to my room and change but in truth sneak down to the library and wait for Platt. It is, however, a more effective display than planned. Firstly, I had not drunk as much as I thought, so rather than a few small drops discreetly spilled, I pour almost a full glass of wine straight down the front of my dress. It’s such a direct shot that I can feel it soak all the way into my knickers. Johanna and Christina both shriek in surprise. I open my mouth to make an excuse and pretend like I have just spilled a normal amount of drink rather than poured a glass down my front, but before I can get a word out, Max leaps at me, trying to lick it off. His weight sends me flying backward. I throw out a hand to steady myself, miss my mark at the edge of the buffet table, and smash it straight into the creamy center of a plate of entremets. Max, now with even more opportunity for carnage, leaps forward, paws upon the table, and plunges his nose in after me, splattering me with thick globs of cream.

  It effectively grinds the party to a halt. It is also a bit more embarrassing than I had expected it to be, particularly considering that I was the architect of the disaster. Well, the first part, at least.

  Johanna apologizes over and over as she wrestles Max off the food, long strings of saliva trailing from his lips to the pastry as he tries desperately to gulp a few more bites before Johanna reaches down his throat and pulls out an entire metal spoon he inhaled in his haste. She’s covered up to her elbow in slime. I’ve got wine down the front of my dress and pastry cream splattered across my side and fur clinging to both. Christina has a small splatter of wine on her skirt and seems intent on pretending she is as victimized as I am.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, and Johanna looks up from Max. I can see in her eyes she knows exactly how intentional this was, whether or not I meant for it to ruin the party.

  “Just go,” she says, her voice so low no one hears but me. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  And yes, it’s exactly what I wanted. But as I make my head-down, tail-tucked exit, I rather wish it hadn’t been.

  Sim isn’t in our shared room, which is unfortunate, as it leaves me with the task of getting myself out of this dress alone. The rules of fashion dictate that anything a man wears, a lady must wear more of; it must be more uncomfortable for her; and it must require at least two people to get her into and out of it, so that she is rendered incapable of an independent existence. I can’t even reach the damn buttons running up the back, let alone unfasten them. I keep turning in circles like a dog chasing its tail, trying each time to stretch my arm just a bit farther while holding on to the deranged hope that perhaps if I catch the buttons by surprise they won’t dart away from me. And every second I waste spinning is a second I might be missing Dr. Platt in the library. At last, I give up, decide to wear the wine with confidence even though it’s starting to turn from sticky to crunchy, and head below stairs.

  The gentlemen’s party in the parlor is still loudly in progress, so I make a quiet slip into the library, in case the hairy-eared butler is lurking, ready to send me back to Johanna’s rooms. The room is warm and smells like dust, and just the presence of so many books makes it easier to breathe. It’s remarkable how being around books, even those you’ve never read, can have a calming effect, like walking into a crowded party and finding it full of people you know.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I spin around with a squeak. Sim is standing behind me, lurking in between two of the stacks and either unaware or unperturbed by the scare she just gave me. “Zounds, don’t do that.”

  “Do what? Address you?”

  “Sneak up on me like that! Or sneak around, full stop. People will think you’re up to something.”

  “What people? You people?”

  “Yes, me people. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be a maid, remember? I’m fairly certain this room is off-limits.”

  “I’m cleaning it.” She swabs a sleeve along the nearest shelf without looking at it. “There. All clean.”

  “Have you found your birthright yet?” I ask.

  It’s too dark to really tell, but I swear I hear her eyes narrow. “Have you talked to your Dr. Platt yet?”

  “Is that it?” I point to the large leather book she’s got tucked under her arm, and she immediately pushes it behind her skirt.

  “Is what it?”

  “That book you’re ineffectively hiding. You can’t take it with you—no stealing, remember? That’s our agreement. Is it what you’re looking for?” She doesn’t say anything, so I hold out my hands. “May I?”

  Reluctantly, she surrenders. It’s not a book, I realize as I carry it over to one of the reading stands with a lit lantern upon it, but more a folio. The cover is monogrammed with the initials SG and a date almost twenty years previous. Inside are intricate botanical drawings—cross sections of tulip bulbs and mulberry trees, the delicate veins of l
eaves mapped like tributaries and a whole page dedicated to the many ways of looking at a mushroom. It’s all done in the sort of minute detail that makes my hand shake just to think of attempting it.

  I look up at Sim, standing on the other side of the lectern, watching me turn the portfolio pages with her teeth working on her thumbnail. “Did you come all the way here to look at a book about nature?” I ask.

  She keeps her nail in her mouth, speaking through teeth gritted around it. “Why does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t,” I say. “That’s just very much something I would do.”

  She stops grinding her teeth, then a slow smile spreads over her lips. “And here you thought we’d have nothing in common.”

  I turn another page and stare down at a sketch of a long snake moving through water, its nostrils bobbing above the surface. I can’t imagine what it is about this work that drew her from a continent away just to see it. I thumb the edges, realizing that, more than anything, it’s a relief. No matter Sim’s protestations otherwise, and that she came to me through Scipio, a small part of me had been chewing its fingernails with certainty that she was here to slit a throat or steal a diamond and I would be complicit for the access I provided.

  “What’s so special about this book?” I ask.

  “It’s not a book, it’s a portfolio,” she replies. “And it’s the only copy.”

  “Well, yes, I assumed that if it existed elsewhere, you would have picked it up from a printer in London.”

  “Of course you did.”

  I look up, and through the sallow glow of the lantern, our eyes meet. In this light, her skin looks bronzed, something burnished and worn into battle by ancient warriors. “It would have saved you a lot of trouble.”

  “Maybe I wanted the trouble.”

  There’s a snap behind us as the latch of the library door clicks open. “Have a good evening,” someone calls, then the creak of hinges as it’s closed again. We’re out of sight, tucked between the shelves, but I can hear footsteps down the next aisle over, heading toward the fireplace. I nearly trip over myself in my haste to grab Sim and shove her out of the room. She tries to take the folio with her, but I slap it shut and shake my head. “No thieving.”