“You’ll survive one more summer with your sister.”
Above us, the baby kicks up his crying—the floorboards aren’t near enough to stifle it—followed by the sound of the nursemaid’s heels as she dashes to his call, a clack like horses’ hooves on cobbles.
Percy and I both flick our eyes to the ceiling.
“The Goblin’s awake,” I say lightly. Muted as it is, his wailing stokes the ache pulsing in my head.
“Try not to sound too happy about his existence.”
I’ve seen very little of my baby brother since he arrived three months previous, just enough to marvel at, firstly, how strange and shriveled he looks, like a tomato that’s been left out in the sun for the summer, and, secondly, how someone so tiny has such huge potential to ruin my entire bloody life.
I suck a drop of sherry from my thumb. “What a menace he is.”
“He can’t be that much of a menace, he’s only about this big.” Percy holds his hands up in demonstration.
“He shows up out of nowhere—”
“Not sure you can claim out of nowhere—”
“—and then cries all the while and wakes us and takes up space.”
“The nerve.”
“You’re not being very sympathetic.”
“You’re not giving me many reasons to be.”
I throw a pillow at him, which he’s still too sleepy to bat away in time, so it hits him straight in the face. He gives it a halfhearted toss back at me as I flop across the bed, lying on my stomach with my head hanging over the edge and my face above his.
He raises his eyebrows. “That’s a very serious face. Are you making plans to sell the Goblin off to a roving troupe of players in hopes they’ll raise him as one of their own? You failed with Felicity, but the second time might be the charm.”
In truth, I am thinking how this tousle-haired, bit-off-his-guard, morning-after Percy is my absolute favorite Percy. I am thinking that if Percy and I have this last junket together on the Continent, I intend to fill it with as many mornings like this as possible. I am thinking how I am going to spend the next year ignoring the fact that there will be any year beyond it—I will get wildly drunk whenever possible, dally with pretty girls who have foreign accents, and wake up beside Percy, savoring the pleasant kick of my heartbeat whenever I’m near him.
I reach down and touch his lips with my ring finger. I think about winking as well, which is, admittedly, a tad excessive, but I’ve always been of the mind that subtlety is a waste of time. Fortune favors the flirtatious.
And by now, if Percy doesn’t know how I feel, it’s his own damn fault for being thick.
“I am thinking that today we are leaving on our Grand Tour,” I reply, “and I’m not going to waste any of it.”
2
Breakfast is laid out in the dining room when we arrive and the staff have already made themselves scarce. The French doors are flung wide so the hazy morning sunshine flutters in across the veranda, curtains billowing inward when the wind catches them. The gold inlay along the scrollwork glows dewy and warm in the light.
Mother looks like she’s already been up for hours, in a blue Jesuit with her lovely dark hair swept back in a neat chignon. I ruffle my fingers through mine, trying to work it into that deliberately rumpled look I usually favor, handsome in the it looked like this when I woke sort of way. Across the table from her, Percy’s aunt and uncle are straight-faced and unspeaking. There’s food enough for a militia spread before the three of them, but Mother’s poking at a single boiled egg in a delftware cup—she’s been making a valiant effort to reclaim her figure since the Goblin wreaked havoc upon it—and neither of Percy’s guardians is having more than coffee. Percy and I are unlikely to make any noticeable impact either—my stomach’s still precarious, and Percy’s finicky about food. He stopped eating meat a year ago, like some sort of extended Lent, claiming it’s for his health, but he’s still sick in bed far more often than I am. It’s hard to be sympathetic when I’ve told him ever since he adopted it that unless he gives me a better explanation, I think his diet is absurd.
Percy’s aunt reaches out when we enter, and he takes her hand. They have the same soft features—thin nosed and fine boned—as Percy’s father has in portraits, though Percy’s got thick black hair that grows in coarse curls and defies wigs, queues, and anything fashionable. Percy’s lived with his aunt and uncle all his life, ever since his father returned from the family estate in Barbados with a jungle fever, his French violin, and an infant son with skin the color of sandalwood, then expired. Lucky for Percy, his aunt and uncle took him in. Lucky for me as well, or else we might never have met, and then what would have been the point of my life?
My mother looks up as we enter and smooths the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes like they’re creases in a tablecloth. “And the gentlemen arise.”
“Good morning, Mother.”
Percy gives her a little bow before he sits, like he’s a proper guest. It’s a ridiculous pretense from a lad I know better than either of my actual siblings. And also like a fair amount more.
The actual sibling present doesn’t acknowledge our arrival. She has one of her amatory novels propped against a crystal jam pot, a serving fork wedged between the pages to hold it open. “That’ll melt your brain, Felicity,” I say as I drop into the seat beside her.
“Not as fast as gin will,” she replies without looking up.
My father—thank God—is absent.
“Felicity,” my mother hisses down to her. “Perhaps you should remove your spectacles at the table.”
“I need them for reading,” Felicity says, eyes still fixed upon her smut.
“You shouldn’t be reading at all. We have guests.”
Felicity licks her finger and turns the page. Mother glowers down at the cutlery. I help myself to a piece of toast from a silver rack and settle in to watch them volley. It’s always pleasant when it’s Felicity being needled instead of me.
Mother glances across the table at Percy—his aunt is plucking at the rather distinct cigar burn on the braided cuff of his coat—then says to me in a confidential tone, “One of my maids found a pair of your breeches in the harpsichord this morning. I believe they were the same ones you left the house in last night.”
“That’s . . . odd,” I say—I thought I’d lost them long before we got home. I have a sudden memory of stripping off my clothes as Percy and I staggered through the parlor in the wee dawn hours, scattering them behind me like fallen trees. “Didn’t happen to find a shoe as well, did she?”
“Did you want them packed?”
“I’m sure I’ve plenty.”
“I wish you had at least looked through what was sent.”
“What for? I can send for anything I’ve left behind, and we’ll be getting new duds in Paris.”
“It makes me anxious to think of sending your fine things to some unknown French flat with a strange staff.”
“Father arranged the flat, and the staff. Take it up with him if you’re skittish.”