“Enough,” Percy interrupts. He presses the box back into my palm, then says, “Monty took this. Nothing we can do about that now, so we should try to find the road and join back up with our company, if they got away.” That if hangs very heavy. It makes me squirm to think that if those highwaymen truly were after the box and if any of our company didn’t escape them, that would be on my shoulders. “How far do you think we are from Marseilles?”
He looks to me, but I can’t remember, so I just stare back blankly.
“Lockwood said it would take a week,” Felicity offers. “We’ve been traveling for five days, so we must be close. I think our best strategy would be to find the road, start toward Marseilles, and hope Lockwood escaped and we can join up with him.”
“How?” I ask. “We don’t know where the road is.”
“Monty, why don’t you worry about making certain your hand isn’t broken?” Felicity says. It’s the verbal equivalent of tossing me something shiny to hold my attention while the adults talk. I glower at her, though she’s gone swivel-eyed through the trees and doesn’t notice.
“We go south.” Percy traces the sun’s path across the sky with his finger, then points. “Toward the sea. The road was heading south.”
“So,” Felicity says, “we walk south until we find a road, then see if we meet up with Lockwood, or else find a carriage or a wagon that will take us the rest of the way. Our equipage will be in Marseilles soon—unless Lockwood and our men didn’t . . . didn’t make it.” She swallows, then scrubs a hand under her nose. “I think it’s best to assume they did, and plan for any eventualities only if we find evidence to the contrary.”
Percy nods, and they both seem so certain about it that I feel like the stupidest person there.
“Well, then,” I say, like I was a critical part of the planning, “that’s decided.” I try to rise, but I’m shakier than I expected and my legs go straight out from under me. I end up slumping forward into the brush, soaking my knees in the damp soil.
“Don’t stand so fast,” Felicity instructs from behind me. “And take a deep breath or you’re going to faint.”
I think about arguing, but she actually seems to know what she’s talking about. I roll onto my back and stare up at the sky, wide and open above us like a tossed picnic blanket shaken from its folds.
“At least Percy saved his violin,” I say, and Percy lets out a grateful, breathy laugh.
7
We walk without seeing any sign of our carriage or an end to the trees or even a sliver of road until the sun is nearly set, and then it’s an empty road that we find, not a light or a house in sight. Percy is the first to suggest what we are all thinking, which is stopping to sleep, since it doesn’t seem likely we’ll find anywhere to stay before we collapse. Summer is peaking like whipped meringue, and the night is thick-aired and damp. Crickets strum from the underbrush.
“This is altogether a different sort of evening than I was hoping for,” I say as we spread ourselves in the warm shadow of a white-barked poplar tree.
“Disappointed?” Percy asks.
I’m gasping for a drink—it’s all I’ve been thinking of for the last several hours, trying to calculate the best-case scenario for getting alcohol in me fast. But I just laugh.
Percy stretches out beside me, which makes my skin stand on end until he puts his violin case deliberately between us. I take that as my sign to stay away. Felicity lies down on my other side and curls up with her hands pillowed under her head. “If you keep rubbing your hand like that,” she says to me, “you might actually break it.”
I hadn’t realized I was. “It bloody hurts!”
“Should have been better at punching.”
“How was I supposed to know there was a correct way to do it? On that subject, how do you know?”
“How do you not know?” she counters. “That can’t be the first time you’ve hit someone.”
“With any degree of seriousness, yes.”
“You hit me once at the pond,” Percy says.
“Yes, but we were boys. And it was more of a smack. And you were teasing me because I wouldn’t put my head under the water, so you deserved it.”
“What about when you came home all black-and-blue from Eton?” Felicity asks.
I try to laugh, but my throat closes up around the sound and it comes out a bit more like I’m drowning. “That wasn’t from a fight.”
“That’s what Mother told me.”
“Yes, well. Parents lie.”
“Why would she lie about that?”
“Hm.”
“I think you’re lying to me.”
“I’m not.”
“I think you got in a fight and that’s why they expelled you. You came home so bashed up—”
“I remember.”
“—you must have done something nasty enough to get one of the other boys to put his fist in your face.”
“No.”
“You’re not one to start fights, but I assumed you’d at least have swung back.”
“It wasn’t another boy, it was Father.”
Silence drops upon us like wet wool. The trees whisper as the wind rakes through them, leaves moon-stained and glittering. Between the branches, I can see the stars, so bright and thick that the sky looks sugared.
Then Felicity says, “Oh.”
My eyes are starting to pinch, and I screw up my face against it. “Good old Father.”
“I didn’t know that. I swear, Mother told me—”
“Why are we talking about this?” I laugh again, because I don’t know what else to do. I want a drink so badly I’m ready to sprint to the next town for it. I press my fists against my eyes and suck in a sharp breath as pain shoots down my wrist. “My hand is absolutely broken.”
“It’s not broken,” Felicity says, and the exasperation behind her voice makes me feel better.
“I think it might be.”
“It’s not.”
“We should sleep,” Percy says.
“Right.” I turn onto my side and find myself face-to-face with him. In the moonlight, his skin looks like polished stone. He smiles at me, so sympathetic it makes me shrivel up. Poor Monty, it says, and I want to die when I think of him pitying me.
Poor Monty, with a father who beats you until you bleed.
Poor Monty, with a fortune to inherit and an estate to run.
Poor Monty, who’s useless and embarrassing.
“Good night,” Percy says, then rolls over, away from me.
Poor Monty, in love with your best friend.