Which is how I come to be running through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dressed only as Nature intended.
I round a hedgerow flanking the Orangerie, realizing that beyond actually fleeing the scene, I have no exit strategy. I have a strong sense I’m being chased and I haven’t time to stop on the lawn and re-dress. I try to pull my breeches back on as I go and nearly lurch face-first into the shrubbery, so I choose to keep my clothing bundled up in front of my most vulnerable parts and continue my flight.
I skirt the wall of the palace, trying to avoid the windows and stay between the topiaries. There isn’t an empty room—nowhere I could dart in and hide or re-robe myself. I’m disoriented and distracted, and go farther than I intend to. When I round the next corner, I find I am in the courtyard, partygoers spilling down the stairs and into the bright lights. I stop dead, which is a fatal miscalculation on my part because a woman sees me and shrieks.
And then everyone turns to stare at me, the Viscount of Disley, standing in the courtyard, with his hair askew and a woman’s powder smeared across his face like flour. And, also, without a stitch of clothing on.
And then, because Fortune is a heartless bitch, I hear someone behind me say, “Monty?”
And, of course, there is Percy, standing beside Felicity, who for the first time in all of her born days seems too shocked to be smirking, and with them, the lord ambassador and his wife. We all gape at each other. Or rather, they gape at me.
There’s really nothing to do but pretend I’m fully clothed and in control of the situation. So I walk up to Percy and say, “There you are. I think we should be going.”
They’re all staring at me. The whole courtyard is staring at me, but it’s Percy and Felicity that I feel the most. Felicity’s got her fish mouth in place but Percy’s shock is starting to fade and he looks . . . embarrassed—of me or for me, it’s hard to say.
“My lord,” the ambassador says, and I turn, still trying to play dead casual. His wife squeaks.
“Yes, sir?”
His face is scarlet. “Have you . . . any possible explanation for your current state of dress?”
“Undress,” I correct him. “And thank you so much for a lovely evening; it’s been quite . . . revealing. But we’re expected home, so we’ll hear from you soon? We should have you for supper before we move south. Percy? Felicity?” I would take their arms but my hands are otherwise occupied, so I tip my chin up and begin to walk away and hope to God they will follow me. They both do, though neither says a word.
When we are at last installed again in our carriage by some rather wide-eyed attendants, I drop my shield and start to shuffle back into my breeches. Felicity throws up her hands with a shriek. “Dear God, Monty, my eyes.”
I arch my back, trying to wriggle in without striking my head on one of the hanging lanterns. “Shame you haven’t your attractive specs on.”
“What were you doing?”
“Look at what I’m wearing and make an educated guess.” I fasten my breeches, then look over at Percy, who is staring forward, stone-faced. “What’s the matter with you?”
His mouth tightens. “Are you drunk?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you drunk?” he repeats.
“Have you ever seen him sober?” Felicity says under her breath.
Percy’s still staring away from me, though that stare is turning into a glare. “Can’t you control yourself? Ever?”
“I’m sorry, are you getting on me to behave? You aren’t exactly a saintly enough candidate to be delivering a morality lecture, darling.”
“Do you think I could ever act the way you do and get away with it?”
“What does that mean?”
“Look at me and take a guess.”
“Really? You want to have that conversation right now? You let everyone walk all over you because you’re skin’s a bit dark—”
“Oh dear God, Monty, stop,” Felicity says.
“—but if you’d grow a spine, I wouldn’t have to stand up for you because you’d do it yourself.”
He looks, for a moment, too astonished to speak. Felicity’s gaping at me too, and I have a deep sense I have said something very wrong, but then Percy tips his chin up. “If that was me—caught naked with some . . . person at the palace—I wouldn’t have been permitted to walk away from that garden the way you just did.”
I start to say something, but he interrupts, his voice slicing, “Aren’t you tired of this—aren’t you tired of being this person? You look like a drunken ass all the time, all the bloody time, and it’s getting . . .”
“It’s getting what, Percy?” He’s not going to say it, so I offer the word up for him. “Embarrassing? Are you embarrassed of me?”
He doesn’t reply, which is answer enough. I wait for defiance to filter through me, but instead I’m filled with it too, that hot, rancid shame rising like a fetid tide.
“Who was she?” Felicity demands. “It was a she, wasn’t it?”
I pull my shirt over my head with a bit more force than is needed. The collar snags my hair. “A girl I met.”
“And what happened to her?”
“I don’t know, I bolted.”
“You were caught with a woman and then you left her there? Monty, you tomcat!”
“She’ll be fine. They didn’t chase me down.”
“Because you’re a man.”
“So?”
“It’s different for women. No one condemns a man for that sort of thing, but she’ll carry that with her.”
“It won’t matter, she’s someone’s mistress. She’s just a whore!”
Felicity’s hands fist around her dress, and for a moment I think she may slap me, but the carriage strikes a rut and we’re all three nearly unseated. She catches herself on the window treatments, then glares at me again. “Don’t you dare,” she says, her voice low and tight, “say anything like that ever again. This is your fault, Henry. No one else’s.”
I look to Percy, but he’s staring out the window now with his face still stone, and I realize what a stupid mistake it was to think Percy gave half a damn what I was doing with a French courtier in a back room. I slink down in my seat and hate them both intensely. I’ve been betrayed—Felicity’s never been on my side, but I thought I could count on Percy. Though now it seems the whole world has been scrambled up.
6
I intend to sleep the next morning until I can sleep no more, but Sinclair wakes me early—the sky outside my window is still opaline with the sunrise. It takes me a while to rally myself to get out of bed. Partly because I’m wrung out and partly because I’m absolutely writhing at the thought of looking Percy and Felicity in the eyes. Mostly Percy. I’m also feeling worse than I expected—I didn’t think I had drunk that much, thanks to the lord ambassador’s blockade, but my stomach won’t sit still, and my whole body feels as though it’s been dragged behind a carriage.