“Very well done. Is the last one to impress all the French girls?”
“Well, I was saying it to you just then. They’re quite something.”
I give him a moment of intense eye contact with my head tipped a little to the side. The corners of his mouth turn up and he shuffles the papers in front of him. “You had a question.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry, you’re . . .” Shy smile. Telling pause. “Distracting.” Now he’s really blushing. Poor, sweet thing, I think as I lean forward on the counter and he looks very directly at my lips. Wait until you fall for the boy who can’t love you back. “So I’m on my tour and . . . Sorry, it’s so queer. On the way down from Paris, we were robbed.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes, it was rather harrowing. We didn’t have much on us, thank God, but they took all the letters of credit my father sent with me. I know this is his bank, but I haven’t got the actual papers.”
He gets ahead of me a moment before I explain it. “You want to make a withdrawal against your father’s name without a letter of credit.”
“I told you it was an unorthodox question.”
“I was expecting much worse.” He cracks a shy smile. “I thought you were going to ask me to dinner.”
“I still might. Though you’d have to pay.” He laughs and I bring the dimples out to play again.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t—”
I know that as soon as the word no makes its appearance, I will have lost irreclaimable ground, so, in what can only be described as a Hannibalistic maneuver, I cut him off at the pass. “I’ll give you my father’s name, and his address in England. He should be in your ledgers, but if there’s a problem, you can write to him and he’ll send funds, I know it. I’m so sorry, but I’m in such a tight spot and I’m a long way from home and it’ll take months before my parents can send any money and I’ve nowhere to go. I hardly even speak French.” I pitch my voice a little, not quite pathetic, but sympathetic, and his whole face melts like butter. I am not good at much, but what I do, I do well. “Sorry, this all sounds strange.”
“No,” he says quickly. “I’m so sorry you’re having a hard time.”
I run my thumb along my bottom lip. “I’ve been standing in the lobby for the last half of an hour trying to get up my courage to come in and ask, I was so afraid I’d be turned down. Honestly, I came to you because you looked the nicest. I mean the kindest. I mean, not that you’re not . . . You’re very nice looking. I promise, I’m not a scoundrel. I just don’t know what else there is to be done. I’ve nothing else left.”
He sucks in his cheeks, then glances down the row of clerks. “Give me your father’s name and address,” he says quietly. “I can’t give you much, but I’ll do what I can.”
I could have kissed him for that. Were we not in distinctly upright society, I would have. He disappears behind the counter, then returns with a small stack of bills. “There was a note with the account,” he says as I sign the receipt, then slides a scrap of paper across the counter to me. At the top is written an address, then below it, in a hasty scrawl:
We have secured lodging at this location and, God willing, you will meet us here.
Beneath is Lockwood’s signature.
As sour as I am on our bear-leader, it’s a relief to know that he survived the highwaymen’s attack. Not only that, but he’s here—we could find him by the afternoon and be back on schedule. Might not even be made to go home, if Felicity’s theory is correct. Instead I’m looking at weeks of rough travel with little money and none of the comforts to which I’m accustomed, and an unknown destination waiting for us at the end of it.
But also maybe something that could keep Percy from an asylum.
The clerk stamps the receipt, then asks, “Is everything all right?”
“Fine.” I fold the note in half and slide it back across the counter. “Could you dispose of that for me, please?” I give him another smile, and when he hands me the bills, I let our fingers overlap on purpose. He looks ready to burst with pleasure.
“How did you do that?” Felicity asks as I rejoin them on the other side of the lobby and show off my spoils.
“Simple,” I reply, and flash her my most roguish smile. “You have your skills and I have mine.”
13
We hire horses from a man in Marseilles and start along the seaside toward Spain. I am somehow stuck with an obstinate mount that resembles less a horse and more a leggy sausage, and seems fond of ingesting my commands and then ignoring them in their entirety. He’s also the hungriest horse for miles—he’s far more interested in pulling up leaves along the road than walking it.
I’m a good rider, but I’m not accustomed to being on a horse for much longer than the length of a hunting trip, and the roads are rough, often nothing but thin paths winding through the scrub. By our third day, I’m so bow-legged and sore that I can hardly get up at night to piss. Percy’s as bad off as I, though his legs are a fair amount longer, which I’m convinced makes a difference.
Felicity rides sidesaddle, so she’s spared some of the pain, though having her with us limits our lodging options. The number of public houses and inns along the road thins the closer we get to the border, and most take only male lodgers. One night we’re so desperate that we sneak her into the room after everyone else is abed. And while I’m not a particularly attentive elder brother, that has even me concerned for my sister’s modesty. But she sleeps soundly between Percy and me, the blanket all the way over her head, and I’m grateful for something to fill the space that would have been there anyway.
The heat is brutal, especially up against the coast, where the sunlight sits on the ocean and festers into a haze. Felicity soaks her petticoats in the sea to keep cool, and Percy and I do the same to our shirts, though they dry before we’re properly chilled. I try to wet my hair once as well, but I have never in my life liked putting my head all the way under and Percy knows it, so as soon as I get as far into the water as I intend to, he takes it upon himself to dunk me the rest of the way. When I surface, spluttering and indignant and far more put out than a nearly grown man should be over being made to go under the water, Percy’s laughing like a fool. He also seems braced for retaliation, for, as soon as I’m back on my feet, he bolts, kicking up the sea as he runs. I’m ready to chase him down and shove him in, but I stop. Percy stops too, when he realizes I’m not after him, and looks back at me—a gaze that feels partly like a challenge and partly like a question, and I wish I had a better answer. I can tell it’s writ all over me—the way that, the week previous, I would have tackled him straight into the sea for a laugh and had no concern. Percy must know what I’m thinking, because he gives me a sad smile and turns for the shore, and I know I’ve just proved he was right for not telling me he was ill.