We are three days on the road, sleeping in sheltered groves and hitching rides on farmers’ carts through fields of close-fisted sunflowers and blooming lavender. We reach Marseilles in the late evening—the linkboys are already out trimming the lantern wicks. It’s a sprawling, shining city, cleaner and brighter than Paris. Notre-Dame de la Garde sits high on the hill above the sea, its white stone reflecting back the sunset as it caramelizes across the breakers, turning the waves gold. The streets of the Panier are narrow and high, wet washing strung between the windows catching the sunlight and flashing like glass.
The banks are all shut up for the day, and as our plan was to find Father’s bank and see if a message from Lockwood or Sinclair has been left for us, we’re rather foiled. It seems we’re condemned to spend another night exposed to the elements unless we go knocking on doors at random, which makes me want to throw myself into the sea. I’m sore head to toe from the walking and the sleeping on hard ground, and my stomach is scratching against my spine. We’ve been eating a mixture of thieved and charitable scraps for days, and the meager breakfast swapped for Felicity’s earrings this morning left me long ago.
As we wander down the main road, toward the fort guarding the harbor, we stumble upon a fair set up along the water, red-and-white-striped tents with ribbons knotted to their ropes and fluttering in the breeze. Paper garlands are strung over the walkways, and the air smells of boiling oil and the mealy tang of beer. Carts of food are lined up between the tents, piled with cheeses rolled in wax, greased turkey legs, skillets filled with candied almonds, and sweet rolls domed with liquefied sugar and berry coulis. It seems the most nickable supper we are going to find.
Felicity takes charge of the thievery, so Percy and I find a table on the pier to wait for her, looking out across the syrupy water and the flocks of ships moored there, gulls flailing between them like snowflakes riding the wind. We sit on either side, Percy’s fiddle case between us. The wood grain is rough and weathered by years of being chewed at by the spray kicked up from the sea.
I’m so tired I put my head down and close my eyes. “Never thought I’d say this, but I’ll be glad to see Lockwood.”
Percy laughs wearily. “Are you getting sentimental?”
“God no—he’s got our banknotes. I want a real drink and a real bed and real food—I could ravish a plate of cakes right now.” When Percy doesn’t reply, I sit up. He’s got his head balanced on his fists, and he looks weary. More than weary, verging on ill—clammy and absent, though I’m likely in an equally sorry state. “You look poorly.”
He doesn’t answer for a moment, then glances up, like he only just realized I spoke. “What?”
“You don’t look well.”
He shakes his head a few times to rouse himself. “I’m tired.”
“So am I. We should be stronger than this. Though I suppose we did just walk across France.”
“We didn’t walk across France,” Felicity says as she flops down on the bench beside me. She’s got a gibassier bun in each hand, fine grains of aniseed from the filling dusting her fingers.
We eat with the sound of the sea and the tinkling melody of fair music underscoring our silence. I finish much faster than Percy or Felicity, who both seem to be trying to savor theirs while I opted for the method of gentlemanly inhalation. I suck the flakes of pastry off my fingers, then wipe my hands on my coattails, leaving oily tracks behind. My wrist knocks against the box in my pocket, and I pull it out and spin the dials.
Felicity watches me, a thin strand of candied orange peel pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Describe for us what brilliant logic it was that led you to think stealing from the French king was a good idea.”
“It wasn’t the king. It was his minister.”
“I believe stealing from a minister to the king is still a capital offense. You’re going to have to return it, you know.”
“Why? It’s just a trinket box.”
“Because firstly, we are being pursued for it.”
“Allegedly.”
She rolls her eyes. “Secondly, because it is not yours. And thirdly, because it was an incredibly childish thing to do.”
“You’re going to make a very fine governess someday with that enthusiasm for rule following,” I say, with a scowl. “That finishing school will have nothing to teach you.”
She sticks the pad of her thumb in her mouth and sucks at a spot of glaze. “Perhaps I don’t want to go to school.”
“Course you do. You’ve been whining for years about how badly you want schooling, and now you can stop being obnoxious because you’re finally going.”
Her mouth puckers. “You know, saying things like that might be the reason most people find you insufferable.”
“People find me insufferable?”
“When you use that sort of phraseology, yes, it’s a word I’d use.”
“I’m just being honest!”
“Be a little less honest and a little more tactful.”
“You’ve put up such a fuss—”
“Yes, for education. An actual education, not finishing school—they’re going to squeeze me into corsets and bully me into silence.”
It’s true—Felicity’s not a broken horse. A finishing school will kick the spirit straight out of her, and while I’ve never been particularly fond of my sister, the thought of a quiet, simpering, cross-stitching, tea-sipping Felicity feels like a slash through a painting.
I almost begin to feel a bit sorry for her, but then she wrecks that with a sour “Do you know how horrid it feels to watch my brother get tossed out of the best boarding school in England, then get to travel the Continent as a reward, while I’m stuck behind, not permitted to study the same things or read the same books or even visit the same places while we’re abroad, just because I had the bad luck to be born a girl?”
“Reward?” My temper is starting to rise to match hers. “You think this tour is a reward? This is a last meal before my execution.”
“Oh, how tragic, you have to run an estate and be a lord and have a good, rich, cozy life on your own terms.”
I gape at her—mostly because I thought we had developed some understanding between us, after what I had confessed to her the night of the highwaymen’s attack, that there is nothing cozy about the life I’ll be walking back to at the end of this year, but here she is spitting in my face like a mouthful of melon seeds.
“Leave him alone, Felicity,” Percy says quietly.
Felicity flicks a pastry flake from her thumb with the tip of her finger, then says, with an upturned nose, “How lucky we would all be to have the problems of Henry Montague.”
I stand up, because Felicity learned to be mean from our father, and with each snide comment the shade of him is filtering through darker and darker.
“Where are you going?” Percy calls.