The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy Page 7

  The ascent his foot has been making up my thigh halts. Percy peers under the table, where his legs are stretched out parallel to mine, then pats his own knee. “Is this what you’re after?”

  Monty flops backward into the booth, raising a puff of dust from the upholstery. “You can’t be serious about traveling, Fel. It’s insane.”

  “No more than giving up your inheritance to live a skilless sod in London,” I snap. “You’re a professional card player, remember; you’re not curing cholera.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Percy interrupts, a hand going up over the table between us like he’s refereeing a boxing match. “This is meant to be a nice evening, and you’re ruining it.” There’s a pause, then he says to Monty with a frown, “My legs aren’t actually thinner than Felicity’s, are they?”

  “Oh, stop it, Perce, you know you have magnificent calves,” Monty says, then adds, “And Felicity has very hairy socks.”

  “Magnificent calves,” I scoff. “Could you have picked a less erogenous body part?”

  It was an unwise door to open, for Percy pipes up, “Monty has nice shoulders.”

  Monty pillows his cheek upon his fist in a swoon. “Do you really think so, darling?”

  “You think he’s got deep dimples in his cheeks,” Percy says to me, “you should see his shoulders.”

  Here I thought nothing could inflate my brother’s head more. I swear his chest actually puffs up. I’m no great lover of this mealy beer, but I take a drink just for the drama of it before I reply, “I pray nightly I never again have occasion to see my brother’s bare shoulders.”

  “Come on now.” Monty knocks his foot into mine—then peers beneath the table to make sure he’s aimed correctly this time. “If you’re going to be a doctor, you mustn’t be shy about human anatomy.”

  “It’s not human anatomy that makes me queasy, it’s your anatomy.”

  “My anatomy is excellent,” he replies.

  “Yes, it is,” Percy adds, pressing his lips to Monty’s jawline, just below his earlobe.

  “Dear God, stop.” I resist the urge to cover my eyes. “You’re still in public, you know.”

  Monty drags himself away from Percy and gives me a saccharine smile. “Felicity, my darling, you know we love you dearly and are so very delighted that you’re staying with us for the time being, but it does place some limitations upon the sort of, shall we say, activities that we are accustomed to engaging in both frequently and privately—”

  “Stop talking now,” I interrupt, “and go find a back room somewhere and suck each other’s faces off.”

  Monty grins, his hands suspiciously out of sight beneath the table. “That’s not what I intend to be sucking.”

  “You are the filthiest creature on God’s green earth,” I tell him.

  Percy wraps an arm around Monty’s shoulder and pulls him into his chest. Their vast height difference is only slightly less comical when they are seated. “Isn’t it adorable?”

  That roguish grin goes wider. “I told you I’m adorable.”

  They slink off together, though slink is far too sheepish a word for it, as there’s absolutely nothing sheepish about it. They strut, hand in hand and tripping over each other in delight. Obnoxiously proud to be in love.

  Scipio and Georgie return with food—neither of them asking where the gents disappeared to, thank god. I don’t eat much, or talk—Scipio asks a few gentle questions about how I’m doing, but my answers must be brisk and simple enough that he knows I’m not in the mood. By the end of the meal, I’m sitting alone at the edge of the group, picking at the cracked white paint on the tabletop and wishing Monty weren’t so right. It’s mad to go to Stuttgart alone. More than mad—it’s impossible. I have almost no money. Certainly not enough to get to the Continent. And what would I do once I arrived? What does one say to a friend who broke your heart? Hallo, remember me? We were young together and used to collect bugs in jars and broke chicken bones from supper so we could practice setting them, but then you called me a pig in a party dress in front of all your new friends and I said you were shallow and uninteresting. Congratulations on your union; may I talk to your husband about a job? I sink down in my seat without meaning to, one hand sliding into my pocket and fiddling with the edges of my list.

  Someone sits down at the table across from me, and I look up, expecting Monty and Percy returned from their backroom romp.

  It’s Sim. In spite of the trousers and loose shirt, she’s far more feminine-looking in close proximity. The bones of her face are fine and elegant in the lamplight. She doesn’t say anything, and I’m not sure what it is she wants from me. We stare at each other for a moment, both of us waiting for the other to speak.

  “Am I interrupting your sulking?” she says at last.

  “I’m not sulking,” I reply, though I very clearly was.

  “So your posture is always that terrible?” Her English has the same accent as Ebrahim’s; he was raised speaking Darija in Marrakesh before being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the American colonies. Before I can reply, she presses on, “You want to go to Stuttgart.”

  I throw my hands up, a gesture that nearly overturns my mug. “Good, so everyone overheard that.”

  “No one overheard it,” she says. “We just heard it. Your brother speaks very loudly.”

  “He’s deaf,” I say, then add, “and obnoxious.”

  Her face doesn’t change. “I want to take you.”

  “Take me where?”

  “To the Continent.”

  “The Continent?”

  “To Stuttgart.” She pauses, then says, “Do you want to repeat that as well?” Her tone snaps with impatience that I can’t keep up, as though she’s proposing something as casual as paying a call together. Though I might have been flummoxed even if her choice of conversation had been more conventional, for her eyes are very dark and very intense and they’ve got me fumbling for an answer. “You want to go there,” she says slowly, tapping a finger on the table between us. “I want to take you.”

  “You want to . . . why?”

  “You know Johanna Hoffman, and you’re invited to her wedding.”

  None of that answers my question. I’m also most definitely not invited to the wedding, but a correction would overturn a complicated grave, so I ask, “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “Oh, do we need to make some preliminaries?” She holds a hand over the table, which I don’t take. “I’m Sim. I work for Scipio.”

  I almost roll my eyes. “Well, now that the niceties are out of the way.”

  “I can do more,” she says. “The weather’s cold. Ebrahim thinks it’s funny to hear me say there are too many white men in London. You should wash your hair more.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your braid fell in your beer when you were slouching.” She folds her hands upon the table with a nod, satisfied with the perfunctory chat. “I’m Sim; you’re Felicity; I want to take you to Germany.”

  If she’s joking, I can’t tell. Her face is impossible to read, those enormous eyes offering no hints. I’m more accustomed to Monty, who can’t make a jape without congratulating himself.

  “Why do you want to take me to Germany?” I ask again.

  Her boot knocks my shin under the table, and I’m annoyed that it’s me who moves to give her room. “Because I need to go to the Hoffman house, and that will be easier if I have you to help me.”

  “Why do you need to get to the Hoffmans’?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, actually, that matters quite a lot to me.” I sit up straighter and match her folded hands upon the table. “If you’re going there to, say, as what I hope is an extreme example, murder someone, or set the house on fire, I’d rather not be complicit in that. Your introduction from the captain included mention of sailing legitimately, which implies that you once didn’t.”

  A flash of irritation breaks over her face, just for a moment, but enough for me to think that th
is stoic façade may be just that. She’s working very hard to appear much cooler and tougher than she actually is, like she hopes that will balance out the fact that she’s ripped open and vulnerable in asking me for this. “I’m not murdering anyone.”

  “And yet you’re silent about arson.”

  “I’ll pay your way. All your expenses to Stuttgart. The Eleftheria’s payout was good—I can prove it if you want. All I ask is that you let me pretend to be your maid so that the Hoffmans will put us up in the house. You can do what you like while we’re there—go to the wedding or accost that man you’re obsessed with—”

  “I’m not obsessed—”

  “And I promise, no one will be in danger or hurt.” She sucks in her cheeks, making a hard, unflattering face. The lamp on the table turns her skin the bright amber of monarch wings. “You can trust me. I’m one of Scipio’s crew.”

  “You’re a sailor,” I say. “What does a sailor want with an English family abroad?” I’m trying to remember if Johanna’s family has any connection to trade or sailing, but by the time her father died and she left England to live with her uncle, we were seeing as little as possible of each other.

  Sim works her mouth into a hard line, then, with great care, says, “To reclaim something that was taken from my family.”

  “So you’re a thief?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Reclaim is just theft in fancy dress.”

  “It’s not theft,” she says. “There is an item that belonged to my family, and I believe it’s now in possession of the Hoffmans. All I want is a location.”

  “The Hoffmans are an upstanding family,” I say. “Johanna’s father was an aristocrat, and her uncle’s a businessman. What sort of dealings would they have with . . .”

  I trail off, but Sim finishes for me. “With someone like me?”

  “With common sailors,” I say. “What’s this mysterious item of unknown location? Is it treasure?”

  She stares down at the table, digging her thumb into a chip of white paint until it snaps free. “More like a birthright.”

  “That’s a very abstract concept to be stealing.”

  “All right. You’re not interested; I’m finished.” She stands up to go, but almost before I realize I’ve spoken, the word “Wait!” tumbles from me.

  She pauses, her chin to her shoulder so that her headscarf obscures most of her face.

  This is a bad idea, and I know it. Humans have instincts specifically for situations like this. Everything in me is saying there is danger lurking in this forest, eyes bright and hungry through the dark.

  I want to walk in anyway.

  Because it’s Alexander Platt. It’s medical schooling. It’s a chance to plant my feet firmly in a direction away from Callum and wifedom and general gentility. What does it matter to me what clandestine mission is drawing her to the same house as me? She’s just a bank with credit to travel. I’m doing nothing wrong so long as she doesn’t.

  “If we go,” I say, “you are there only for a location. You have to promise me there won’t be a theft or damage or harm done to any person or item. I won’t let you into their house just to make a robbery of it. That’s my condition.”

  “I said I wouldn’t steal anything.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Why are you so certain I’m villainous?”

  “Because the alternative is that you’re simply doing a good turn for a stranger, and your initial approach would lead me to believe otherwise.”

  I have suppressed enough eye rolls in my lifetime to know she’s working very hard to do so. “I promise.”

  “We’d have to leave soon,” I tell her. “The wedding is in three weeks.” Even as I say it, it hardly feels like enough time, particularly if we’re traveling on limited funds. There’s a chance we’ll arrive only to find Dr. Platt and Johanna have already traded their vows and are now cozied up in some honeymoon suite leagues away. Arriving uninvited to a wedding is one thing—bursting in on a honeymoon quite another.

  “I’m ready to leave whenever you are,” she replies.

  “Will you be missed?” She shakes her head. “And you won’t tell my brother?”

  “Does that mean you’re in?” She holds out a hand again, and this time I take it. I expect a firm shake, but instead she pulls me up, so that we’re nose to nose. She’s a few inches taller than I am, thin but powerful. Perhaps those hungry eyes are hers. Perhaps I don’t care.

  “Yes,” I say, and it feels like a step off a cliff. My pulse flutters with the freefall. “I’m in.”

  6

  I wait until the next morning to tell Monty I’m leaving.

  I hoped to catch both him and Percy at the same time so that Percy could provide a buffer between my brother and me, but he departed early for a concert, and Monty woke late from a night at his casino, so he has his breakfast while I take luncheon, though they’re both comprised of the same stale bread and coffee. He receives the news with indifference—most likely because all I say is that I’m leaving, with no additional details about where or with whom that departure will be made.

  From his perch upon the stove, rippling the surface of his steaming coffee with his breath, Monty asks, “So what are you going to say to Mr. Doyle? Should I be checking the post for a wedding invitation?”

  I drop a cube of bread into my coffee to soften it. “Actually, I’m not going to Edinburgh. I’m going to Johanna’s wedding.”

  “What?” He looks up. “How?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “I think that’s rather critical information.”

  I fish the bread out of my cup with my spoon. I can feel him staring at me, but I refuse to look. “The woman we had supper with—from Scipio’s crew. She’s helping me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to go to Stuttgart.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Why is she helping you?”

  He may not be the sharpest scalpel in the surgical kit, but he’ll raise the concerns I have forced myself to ignore at the mention of reclaiming a birthright, so instead I offer up a question in deflection. “Why are you making that face at me?”

  “You’re going to meet that doctor, aren’t you?”

  “I am going because Johanna is my friend, and I’d like to see her married,” I say.

  Monty snorts. “Is she? I seem to remember you two shouting at each other at Caroline Peele’s birthday party, and you making a very impassioned decree that you had no further interest in her company.”

  I set my mug on the stack of trunks that serves as their table, a little harder than I mean to. A few drops slosh out over my hand. “Why are you being such an ass about this?”

  “Because this sounds like a terrible idea, and I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, that’s not reason enough for me not to go,” I say. “I worry constantly about you and Percy being pilloried or tossed in the Marshalsea or you setting your flat on fire because you don’t know how to boil water, but I don’t stop you.”

  “I’m not trying to stop you from studying medicine, but I’m not going to pretend I think this is the way to do it.”

  “What other way is there?” I ask. I’m annoyed that my tone is rising while his is staying maddeningly even. I am not usually the first of us to grow agitated. “I may not get another chance like this.”

  “But you’re smart. And you work hard. And you don’t give up. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.”

  He’s not going to understand. It crystalizes for me in a moment. We may have grown up in the same house, two restless children with contrary hearts, but our parents sought to sand down our edges in different ways. Monty suffered under the hand of a father who paid far too much attention to his son’s every movement, while mine was a youth of neglect. Unacknowledged. Unimportant. While Monty might have someday run the estate, the best that could be hoped for me was I’d leave it in the arms of a wealthy man. Had he stayed, Monty would have been th
at wealthy man to some other girl. That was the best either of us could hope for.

  We may have both left home. Defied our parents and our upbringings in favor of our passions. But there are rocks in my road Monty can’t understand how to navigate, or even conceive of being there in the first place.

  He drains his coffee, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then says, “Stay a few more weeks with us. Or we can find you a room somewhere and help you with the rent. Write to your Dr. Platt and see what he says. Visit a few more of the hospitals here.” He bites his lip, and I know I won’t like what he says next. “Just don’t go to Stuttgart with that woman, all right? It’s a bad idea.”

  He’s not going to understand. Better to pretend that I do. “Fine,” I say.

  He looks up, and I wonder if my tone was curt enough to raise suspicion—I had tried to sound sincere but had fallen rather short. “Really?” he says. “You agree with me?”

  “Of course I do. It’s far more sensible to stay in London.”

  “Yes!” He slaps a hand upon his knee. “Exactly, yes. Remember this day, Felicity: the day you agreed I am the more sensible out of the pair of us.”

  “I’ll mark it in my diary,” I say dryly, then stand up to refill my mug. Hopefully the movement will disrupt the conversation enough that he’ll truly think me a changed woman and we can move forward to something else.

  I shall not get Monty’s permission to go to Stuttgart. Luckily, I don’t need it.

  I continue the charade of planning to stay in London for the next two days before Sim and I are to depart. I let Percy suggest neighborhoods in which I might look for a flat and Monty make ludicrous propositions about how I shall break into the field of medicine, all the while gathering my meager possessions in my knapsack under the pretense of tidying up the flat. It is a traditionally feminine enough activity that neither Monty nor Percy seems suspicious.

  Then, in the wee hours of the last day of the week, I get up after a sleepless night, dress silently in the dark, and let myself out of the flat, my knapsack knocking against the backs of my knees.