The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  And what would you want even if you could? says a small voice in my head.

  I’ve no answer, which sets off a flare of panic inside me. I suddenly feel myself to be drifting, out of even my own control.

  What do you want?

  The musicians take a recess and a man comes onto the stage to do a recitation of a poetical nature. A few people in the crowd boo. Percy knocks his shoulder into mine when I join them. “Stop that.”

  “He deserves it.”

  “Why? Poor thing, he’s just a poet.”

  “Is more reason needed?” I kick my feet up on the table, misjudging the distance and catching my toe on the edge. Our empty glasses wobble. “Poetry is the most embarrassing art form. I can sort of understand why all the poets off themselves.”

  “It’s not so easy.”

  “Course it is. Here, attend.” I whack him on the back of the head to make him pay attention to me instead of the stage. “I’m going to write a poem about you. ‘There once was a fellow named Percy,’” I start, then falter. “‘Who . . .’ Damn, what rhymes with Percy?”

  “Thought you said it was easy.”

  “Blercy? That’s a word, isn’t it?”

  Percy sips at his whiskey, then sets his glass upon the rail and says with a lilt, “There was a young fellow I knew / Named Henry Montague.”

  “Well, that’s unfair. Everything rhymes with my surname. Blue. Chew. Mutton stew.”

  “He drinks lots of liquor / And never gets sick-er.” He pauses for fullest effect, then finishes, “And he’s four inches longer than you.”

  I burst out laughing. Percy drops his head over the back of the chair, with a grin. He looks very pleased with himself. Nothing delights me more than filthy things born from Percy’s tongue. Most who know him wouldn’t believe that such a quiet, polite lad has told me stories that would color a sailor’s cheeks.

  “Oh, Perce. That was beautiful.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I should share it with Lockwood.”

  His head shoots up. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Or at least write it down, for posterity—”

  “I swear to God, I shall never speak to you again.”

  “Perhaps I’ll say it back to myself as I’m falling asleep tonight.”

  He kicks the leg of my chair, and I’m nearly unseated. “Goose.”

  I laugh, and it comes out a tipsy giggle. “Do another one.”

  Percy gives me a smile, then leans forward with his elbows on his knees like he’s thinking hard. “Monty often smells of piss.”

  “Well, I like this one significantly less.”

  “But plays a wicked hand of whist.”

  “Better.”

  “Though Lockwood may doubt him, / There’s something about him / That everyone just wants to . . .” And then he stops, a bright flush creeping into his cheeks.

  The corners of my mouth begin to turn up. “Go on, Percy.”

  “What?”

  “Finish it.”

  “Finish what?”

  “Your poem.”

  “My what?”

  “The rhyme, half-wit.”

  “Does it rhyme? I didn’t realize. Oh, wait. . . .” He feigns reviewing the verse in his head. “I hear it now.”

  I lean in to him. “Come now, what were you going to say?”

  “Nothing. I don’t remember.”

  “Yes, you do. Go on.” He makes a humming noise with his lips closed. “Do you want to finish it, or do you want me to keep pestering you?”

  “Ah. Bit of a tough choice.”

  I press my foot into his shin. His stocking has slipped from his garter and is bunched up around his ankle. “That everyone just wants to what, Percy? What is it exactly that everyone wants to do to me?”

  “Fine.” Now he’s really blushing, poor boy. He’s not so dark skinned that he can’t still go fantastically red when sufficient cause arises. He blows a short breath, then scrunches up his nose. It looks like he’s working rather hard not to smile. “Though Lockwood may doubt him, / There’s something about him / That everyone just wants to kiss.”

  That single word sends a pulse up my spine like a struck lightning rod. Percy laughs and ducks his chin, suddenly shy. I mean to sit back and say something coy so we can play it off as a laugh—I swear to God, I do. But then he licks his lips, and his eyes flit to my mouth in a way that seems a little out of his control.

  And I want to. So badly, I do. Just thinking about it makes all the blood leave my head. And the drink has just enough of a hold on me that the part of my brain that usually steps in the path of terrible ideas and halts them with a sensible Steady on there, lad, let’s think this one through seems to have taken the night off. So in spite of being in possession of a full understanding of what a terrible decision it is to do so, I lean in and kiss Percy on the mouth.

  I truly intend to make it a peck, just a small one, like it’s only because of the rhyme and not because I’ve been going mad with wanting him for two years. But before I can pull away, Percy puts his hand on the back of my neck and presses me to him and suddenly it’s not me kissing Percy, it’s Percy kissing me.

  For perhaps a full minute, I’m so stunned that the only thing I can think is, Dear Lord, this is actually happening. Percy is kissing me. Really kissing me. Neither of us is sober, or even sober-adjacent, but at least I’m still seeing straight. And, damnation, it feels so good. As good as I’ve always imagined it would be. It makes every other kiss I’ve ever had turn to smoke and disappear.

  And then it’s not just Percy kissing me—we’re kissing each other.

  I can’t decide if I’d rather keep my hands in his hair or do something about getting his shirt out of the way—I’m feeling frantic and scrambly, unable to commit to a single place to put my hands because I want to touch him abso-bloody-lutely everywhere. Then he slips his tongue into my mouth, and I am momentarily distracted by the way the entirety of my being spills over with that feeling. It’s like being set aflame. More than that—it’s like stars exploding, heavens on fire. Kissing Percy is an incendiary thing.

  I tug his bottom lip between my teeth and work it gently, and he lets go a bright, weighted breath as he slides from his chair onto my lap. His hands go under my shirt, tearing it out of the waistband of my breeches in handfuls, then his arms slide all the way around me, and I’m struggling to stay soft, trying to think of the least arousing things possible, and it just isn’t working because Percy’s got his legs on either side of my lap and his mouth is open against mine and I can feel his palms up and down my back.

  I run my tongue down his jawline, so enthusiastic that my teeth scrape him, at the same time working my fingers against the buttons of his breeches until the essential one pops. He inhales softly with his head tipped skyward when my fingers meet his skin. His nails dig into my spine, my shirt rucked up in his fists. I know we should be careful—it’s a private box, but not that private, and if anyone saw us like this, we might get in real trouble—but I don’t care. Not about who might be lingering nearby or the pillory for sodomites or my father’s threat of what will happen if I’m caught with a lad. Nothing matters right then but him.

  “Monty,” he says, my name punching its way through a gasp. I don’t reply because I’m far more interested in sucking on his neck than in doing any talking, but he takes my face in his hands and raises it to his. “Wait. Stop.”

  I stop. It may be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, though it should be noted I have not had a very hard life. “What is it?” It’s ridiculous how winded I am, like I’ve been running.

  Percy looks me dead in the eyes. I’ve still got one hand spread like a starburst on his chest, and his heart is pounding against my fingertips. “Is this just a laugh to you?”

  “No,” I say before I can think it through. Then, when his eyes widen a little, I pin on hastily, “Yes. I dunno. What do you want me to say?”

  “I want . . . Nothing. Forget it.”

/>   “Well, why’d you stop, you goose?” I think we’ll take up where we left off, so I lean in again, but he ducks out of the way and I freeze, my hand hovering between us.

  Then he says, very quietly, “Don’t.”

  Which is not a particularly fine thing to hear when I’ve still got one hand down his trousers.

  I don’t move right away—give him a moment to change his mind and come back to me, though it’s clear from his expression that I’m fooling myself in thinking he will. It’s a fight to keep my face straight, pretend I don’t have years’ worth of wanting attached to this excellent kiss with the most gorgeous boy I know, but I manage to say, “Fine,” without giving away how much that single word feels like the trapdoor of a scaffold falling out from under me.

  Percy looks up. “Really? Fine?” he repeats. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Fine by me.” I shove him off my lap, which is what I think I would probably do if this were a laugh, but it’s harder than I mean to and he falls. “You started it. You and your daft poem.”

  “Right, of course.” Suddenly he sounds angry. He’s fiddling with the buttons of his breeches, refastening them with more force than necessary. “This is my fault.”

  “I didn’t say it was your fault, Perce, I said you started it.”

  “Well, you wanted it too.”

  “Too? I wanted it too?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I really don’t. And I really don’t care. God, it was just a kiss!”

  “Right, I forgot you’ll kiss anything with a mouth.” Percy picks himself up with a bit of a stumble and winces.

  I reach out, even though I’m too far away to help. “You all right?”

  “You just shoved me and now you’re asking if I’m all right?”

  “I’m trying to be decent.”

  “I think you missed that chance a long while ago.”

  “God, Perce, why are you being such a prick?”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  And so we conclude what might have been a fireworks-and-poetry sort of evening with the most uncomfortable walk home ever shared by any two people in history.

  5

  I do a valiant job of ignoring Percy for the next few days. He keeps his distance as well—I can’t decide if he’s avoiding me or just giving me space to cool off—though not so far that I don’t notice the rather telling mark on his neck that his collars aren’t quite high enough to cover. It’s a fine reminder of the most mortifying thing I’ve ever done.

  I don’t claim a perfect record when it comes to romantic advances, but Percy’s rejection stings like salt in an open wound. It plays in my head for days, over and over no matter how hard I try to shake it off or console myself with the memory of how good it felt before it all fell apart. My attempts to scrub it out with whiskey lifted from our kitchen do no good either. I keep hearing that single word—don’t—and reliving the moment he pushed me away.

  Lots of boys mess around at that age. I can still hear my father saying it, and it feels like a kick in the teeth every time. Lots of boys mess around. Especially when it’s late and they’re mauled and far from home.

  I stay comfortably drunk for the next few days, perhaps toeing the line between comfortably and deliriously, for I forget entirely that my father arranged for us to accompany Lord Ambassador Worthington to Versailles for a summer ball until Lockwood announces it over breakfast in a voice that implies I’m an imbecile for forgetting. But it is, however temporary, a distraction from thinking of Percy. And Lockwood won’t be coming, so it might be a properly good evening.

  Felicity seems to be laboring under the delusion that she will not be required to attend, in spite of the fact that she shopped for outfitting alongside Percy and me when we first arrived. She gives an unconvincing performance of nondescript unwellness, and seems shocked when Lockwood is unmoved. When she finally agrees to dress, she emerges from her room looking as though she’s put the least effort possible into it. She’s in the French gown tailored for her, which was rather matronly to begin with, but no cosmetics and her hair is in the same twisted plait she’s worn it in all day. She hasn’t even washed the ink off her fingers—the remnants of some scribblings she’s been doing in the margins of her novel. Her maid follows, looking cowed.

  Lockwood gives a dramatic sucking-in of the cheeks, paired with an equally dramatic tapping of the foot, as he surveys her. Felicity folds her arms and surveys him straight back. She’s a fierce, stubborn creature when she wants to be, and, I begrudgingly allow, it can be glorious.

  “It seems,” Lockwood says at last, “that the three of you all lack an understanding of the reality of your positions.”

  “The reality is, I don’t see the point in me being made to attend tonight,” Felicity says. “I’ve asked to go to see the galleries with you and Monty and Percy and hear the lectures, but you—”

  “Well, for a start, I must say I find it inappropriate how informal you are with each other,” Lockwood interrupts. “From now on, I’d like to hear you address one another properly—no given names, please, or these pet names of which you seem fond.”

  I nearly burst out laughing at that. I can’t imagine calling Percy Mr. Newton with a straight face, nor can I see Felicity doing the same—Percy’s around so often they might as well be siblings. They certainly get on better than she and I do. Though I’m rather cheered by the thought of Felicity being made to address me as my lord.

  Lockwood catches my grin before I can pocket it and pivots his sights. “And you. Such blatant disregard for one’s own privilege, I have never witnessed. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? I joined the navy, risking my life for king and country. I did not have the chance or the means to take a tour of the Continent, and here you are handed that opportunity at no personal sacrifice and you squander it.”

  Well, this situation certainly got away from me. I don’t see why it’s me getting the lecture when it’s only Felicity being belligerent.

  “And”—Lockwood turns to Percy, seems to decide there’s nothing about him that’s really worth getting worked up over, and moves back to a collective address—“be forewarned that I will have very little patience for further antics from any of you. Am I understood?”

  “We’re late” is all Felicity says in reply—which we are. Lockwood is immediately flustered, calling for our footman and ushering us to the door, our departure so hasty that Felicity isn’t made to clean up. Which is unfair.

  “You’ll be the talk of the evening in that rig,” I say to her as I offer her my hand into the carriage. “Tell me, is that actual sackcloth, or simply plain muslin?”

  “Well, you’ve enough frills for the both of us,” she replies, ignoring my hand. “You’ll put the ladies to shame.”

  I resist the urge to rip some of the ruched trim off the mint-colored coat I had until this moment thought was quite handsome. My little sister has inherited from my father the knack for making me a self-conscious fool about everything.

  “I think you look nice,” Percy tells me, which makes me want to throw something at him. He’s got on an indigo coat with a flowered brocade along the cuffs and velvet breeches to match. It isn’t fair that we’re quarreling and he still looks so goddamn fantastic.

  We meet the lord ambassador and his wife at the palace gates. He’s a tall fellow with a gray buckle-rolled wig, and he has a sword hanging from his belt. His wife is short and stout, though her hair makes her nearly as tall as he is. She’s powdered pale as milk, a distinct rim at her hairline that the cone missed, with too much rouge overtop and a pox patch beneath each eye. In their poor imitation of French fashion, they look like pastries in a bakery window at the end of the day, trying a bit too hard to be beautiful as they wilt.

  “Lord Disley.” The lord ambassador gives me a firm handshake when we meet, with one hand on my elbow like he’s trying to buckle me to his side. It’s a bit of an effor
t to pry my way out. “Well met, my lord, very well met. I’ve heard . . . so much about you from your father.”

  Which starts the evening off on a remarkably sour note.

  The lord ambassador ignores Percy when he gives his hand, instead offering up a critical and not at all subtle up-and-down before he turns to Felicity. “And Miss Montague. You look so very like your mother. Such a lovely woman. You’ll be so lovely someday.”

  Felicity frowns, like she’s trying to work out whether or not what he said was a jab. I’m not certain either, though that frown is doing nothing for the case of her current loveliness.

  “Oh, stop that, Robert, she’s already gorgeous,” his wife says, which seems to make Felicity even more uncomfortable. Lady Worthington takes her by the arm and makes her spin once, which Felicity executes with halting steps, like she isn’t entirely certain what is happening but is quite certain she doesn’t like it. “What an interesting dress,” the lord ambassador’s wife remarks, and I can’t resist a snort at that one. Worthington frowns at me. So does Percy, which is far more annoying.

  As one lady coos and the other reluctantly allows herself to be cooed at, the lord ambassador takes me aside and says in a confidential whisper, “Your . . . Who is that, precisely?” He nods to Percy, who is doing a rather obvious pantomime of not eavesdropping.

  “My friend,” I reply flatly. “He’s my friend.”

  “Does your father know? He didn’t mention you’d be bringing . . .”

  “Percy’s traveling with me,” I say. “We’re touring together.”

  “Oh. Oh, of course. Mr. Newton.” The note of surprise in his voice is as blatant as a battle-ax as he turns to Percy. “I know your uncle.”

  “Do you?” Percy asks.

  “Yes, old friends. He had just been appointed to the admiralty court when I was still a merchant out of Liverpool. He never mentioned he had a ward that was . . .” He drifts off, pumping his hand in a circle like he might waft an appropriate ending to that sentence our way, then instead says, “You’ve been in Paris since May, have you? How do you find it?”