I can’t think of anything to say, so I settle for the second-best thing to a witty retort and storm out. But even that gets botched when the boat suddenly tips and I’m pitched into the wall.
I straighten myself out, stomp to the door, and don’t look back.
10
Felicity is still on the deck when I return, her chin to her chest and her eyes closed, but she looks up as I slump beside her. If she were Percy, I’d bury my head in her shoulder and moan, but she’s not, she’s Felicity, and the only person I want to talk to about my fight with Percy is Percy. Which just seems unfair.
“So, what did you two talk about?” Felicity asks lightly.
“Percy’s ill.”
“Yes.”
“Epilepsy.”
“He told me.”
“When? Two years ago when he first found out?”
“No. About an hour ago, before you woke up.”
“He’s . . .” I mash my fingers into my forehead. I’m not certain if he told her about the sanatorium, and I’m afraid that giving voice to it is going to make it feel even more sickening and real than it already does, so I say, “He’s not possessed.”
“No, he’s not,” she says, and the firmness in her voice surprises me. “And his doctors are backward quacks if any of them told him so. If they’ve been keeping up with any recent research, they should know it’s been proven that epilepsy is nothing to do with demonic possession. That’s all dark ages nonsense.”
“So, what causes it?”
“The Boerhaave School published a pamphlet—”
“The what?”
“Never mind.”
“No, tell me. The—that thing you said. The school thing. What does it say?”
She lets out a little sigh through her nose. “It simply claims there are many reasons someone might develop epilepsy, but no one truly understands any of them. It’s all speculation.”
“Can it be cured?” Because if there’s a cure, if there is anything that could possibly make him well, he won’t be sent to Holland and I won’t lose him.
But Felicity shakes her head, and my lifeline slips out to sea.
I press my face into my knees. The first rays of the sun are starting to creep across the back of my neck. It’s maddening that the world is so quiet and still and completely unchanged from the moment before I stepped into the cabin of the boat.
Percy’s ill.
It’s seeping through me like a poison, leaving me jumbled up and numb. Percy’s ill and will never be well again and is being sent away to die in a sanatorium because of it. And, close on its heels, a second thought that leaves me nearly as cold—Percy didn’t trust me enough to tell me so.
“Felicity, am I a good person?”
She looks sideways at me, one eyebrow ascending. “Why? Are you having some sort of crisis?”
“No. Yes.” I scrub my fingers through my hair. “Percy didn’t tell me.”
“I know. That wasn’t very good of him, but I sort of understand it.”
“Why? What’s so wrong with me that you both seem to think I couldn’t handle knowing?”
“Well . . . you’re a bit of a rake.”
“Thanks for that.”
“You can’t behave the way you do and then be surprised when someone tells you so.” She massages her temples with the tips of her fingers, her mouth pulling into a frown. “I do not pretend to understand the passionate friendship you and Percy have always sustained—you’re important to each other, there’s no questioning that. But I don’t think you can blame him for not telling you. Your attention is usually elsewhere, and when hard things come up, you . . . drink, you sleep around. You run away.”
I want to run away right then but there’s just Percy in the cabin and water on either side, and the person I most want to run away from is me.
Instead I say, “I’m glad you were there. For Percy. If it had been just me he probably would have died.”
“He wouldn’t have died.”
“You seem to be underestimating my incompetence.”
“Epileptic fits aren’t fatal, unless some outside force comes into play. If he’d struck his head, or fallen into the sea—”
“Please stop,” I say, and she lapses into silence.
I muss my fingers through my hair again. For the first time in a long while, I feel compelled to do something about someone’s pain besides my own, but the press is blunted by knowing there’s not a damn thing to be done for him. Nor can I undo these past two years. He’s had no one, not even his family, on his side for this. I’d always thought it was Percy and me against the world, but the truth was, I marooned him long ago and never realized it.
“How did you know what was happening to him?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I didn’t, but I had a guess.”
“And about . . . that school you were talking about.”
“The Boerhaave School? It’s not a literal school. It’s a school of scientific thought. I’ve read about it some.”
“I thought you read . . . What exactly is in those books of yours?”
She crosses her arms and blows a tight sigh through her nose. “If I tell you something, you can’t mock me for it. And I don’t only mean now. You can’t whip this out and mock me for it at some later date when you’re feeling peevish.”
“I’m not going to mock you.”
She takes another huffy breath, nostrils flaring, then says, “I’ve been studying medicine.”
“Medicine? Since when have you been interested in that?”
“Since my whole life.”
“Where do you learn about medicine?”
“I read. I’ve been stripping the covers off amatory novels and swapping them with medical textbooks for years so Father wouldn’t find out. He’d rather I read those trampy Eliza Haywoods than study almanacs on surgery and anatomy.”
I burst out laughing. “Feli, you glorious little shit. That’s the most devious thing I’ve ever heard.”
She laughs too, and I remember suddenly we’ve got matching sets of dimples. It’s so rare that I see Felicity smile I’d forgotten we both inherited them from our father. “I’d rather study medicine than go to finishing school. That’s what I wanted. But they don’t let girls into universities. Girls go to finishing school and boys go to medical school.”
“Not me. I’m supposed to run the estate.”
I laugh, like it isn’t excruciating to be the punch line of your own joke, but Felicity’s face softens. “I didn’t know Father was so rough on you.”
“Every father is rough on his sons. I’m not the only one.”
“Doesn’t make it easier.”
“I survived it, didn’t I?”
“Did you?” She touches her forehead lightly to my shoulder, then sits up straight again. “What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing,” I say, though said smile breaks into a sudden laugh. “Only, I think it’s quite amusing that our respectable parents raised two contrary children.”
Felicity grins at me in return, and then she laughs as well—a loud and distinctly unladylike sound, and I love it all the more for that. “Two contrary children,” she repeats. “Our new little brother doesn’t have a chance.”