“No eaves were dropped, I was just standing about. It’s their fault they weren’t speaking softer. And that’s not the point! The point is, something is going on and I have a sense we’re being conspired against. We need to find what we can about Mateu Robles’s alchemical cures and then get away from here. Why aren’t you as worked up about this as I am?”
The bartender delivers our shot glasses, and Percy slides one down to me with a smile. “Because I don’t want to worry about that right now. I just want to be out with you. We’re here, aren’t we? In Barcelona. At the opera. Let’s enjoy it.” He traces the rim of his glass with a finger, and it hums at his touch. “We won’t have many more nights like this.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“No, it’s not, because we are going to find whatever secrets they have about alchemical cures and then you’ll be well again.” On the stage, the soprano starts in on a punishing first aria at a pitch that makes the air tremble. I wince. “Here then, let’s play a game where we drink every time someone sings something in Spanish.”
“Italian.”
“What?”
He tips his head toward the stage. “This is Handel—it’s in Italian.”
“Is it?”
“Definitely Italian.”
I decide not to mention how adorable I find it that he knows all that just by hearing a few bars. The soprano strikes another blistering note and I grimace. “Doesn’t matter, I hate it.” I tap the rim of my glass against his. “To beauty, youth, and happiness.”
He laughs. “Do we qualify for any of those of late?”
“Well, we are indisputably young. And I am happy—at least right now, because I haven’t had a proper drink in a fortnight and I’m quite excited about this. And you are . . .” I trail off, my neck starting to heat.
Percy turns to me quickly, his eyes catching the light and reflecting a mischievous glint. I’m suddenly aware of my body in a way I wasn’t a moment before, every twitch and blink, the way my shoulders sit inside this too-big coat, the bob of my throat as I swallow hard, every point of my silhouette that his gaze touches. Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn’t take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.
I could tell him. Right here, right now, let it out in the light. Percy, I could say, I think you are the most beautiful creature on God’s green earth and I would very much like to find a hidden corner of this opera house and engage in some behavior that could only be termed sinful.
Percy, I could say, I am almost certain that I am in love with you.
But then I think about that kiss in Paris, the way he pushed me away once I let slip a hint that it might mean something more than a random romp. He’s been so fond with me since we reached Spain, in a way he hasn’t since before I put my mouth on his that disastrous night, and that feels fragile as spun sugar, too sweet and precious to risk its collapsing.
“I’m what?” Percy asks, mouth curling upward.
The singer breaks off, the orchestra lapsing into an interlude. Percy’s eyes flit away from me, toward the stage, and I slap him on the shoulder. “Yes, Percy, you’re very handsome,” I say as flippantly as I can muster, then toss back my whiskey in two quick swallows. It burns as it hits my throat.
When I turn back to him, that drowsy hint of a smile has vanished. He shifts so he’s propped backward against the bar on his elbows, tugging again at his coat collar to ward off the heat. Then he leans suddenly in to me and says, “Here, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. When we were in Paris . . .”
He halts, and my stomach drops. When I look over at him, his eyes are fixed on a point across the room. “What about Paris?” I say, trying to be dead casual about it, but he doesn’t seem to hear. “Percy?”
“Look, it’s Dante.”
“What?” I whip around and follow his gaze across the room. Amid the tables, there’s Dante, hands in his coat pockets and shoulders pulled up, like a turtle drawing into its shell. He’s talking to an older gent in a white wig and a fine gold coat, his fingers curled over a silver-handled cane. The man smiles kindly at Dante, who looks to be stuttering something, but then shakes his head.
Both Percy and I keep silent, though we’re too far away to hear anything being said. The man bends down, forcing Dante to meet his eyes, says something that makes Dante go red, then makes to clap him on the shoulder, but Dante steps out of the way and instead he ends up swatting the air between them. The man smiles, then starts off toward the gambling tables while Dante flees the other direction, through the doors and back out to the boxes.
“Do you think that’s—” Percy starts, but I’m ahead of him.
“We need to talk to him.”
“Who, Dante?”
“No, whoever that is.” I flail a hand at the white-wigged cove. He’s already settled himself at a hazard table across the room—for a man with a cane, he’s a speedy bastard. “Let’s have a game, get him talking, ask about the Robleses, see if he’ll tell us anything. Maybe he knows about their connection to the Bourbons or what their father was doing with his alchemy. Or anything about them.”
I start toward the table, but Percy catches me by the back of my coat. “Hold on, they’re not going to let you sit at a gambling table for a chat. We’re going to have to bet.”
“Oh . . .” I glance over—there are only three empty seats left at the man’s table, and one gets snagged almost as soon as I look.
“I’ll get chips,” Percy says. “You corner him.”
“Brilliant.” I start away again, but then double back to him. “You all right?”
“Fine,” he says, though he’s plucking at his shirt. “It’s so hot, is all.”
“We’ll make this the quickest card game of our lives. Meet at the table.”
I sidle through the crowd, trying not to look like I’m making a charge for those two empty seats. A pair of swains are standing behind them, talking, one of them with his hand resting on a seat back, but I dive in before they can and fall, a little less gracefully than I had hoped, into the chair beside the man Dante was conversing with.
He glances up from his chips and gives me a smile. I offer a big one in return. “Not too late, am I?” I say in French.
“Not at all,” he replies. “Welcome to Barcelona.”
“Sorry?”
“You sound foreign.”
“English. My friend and I are on our Tour—he’s gone for chips.”
“We don’t get many English tourists here. How did you make your way so far south?”
Oh, this is going splendidly. “We’re visiting friends. The Robles family.”
His eyebrows meet in the center of his forehead. “Oh, are you?”
“Wagers, please, gentlemen,” the caster interrupts. “We’re ready to begin.”
I resist the urge to glance around for Percy. “Do you know them? The Robleses.”
“In a professional capacity. I spoke with Dante earlier tonight, actually.”
I’m not what might be called accomplished at subtlety, but asking forthrightly And what did you two speak about? seems excessively bold, so instead I say, “What’s your profession?”