The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  I should feel worse for lying to Mateu Robles. But if it’s a choice between preserving his wife and saving Percy, it’s not a choice, not for me. Someone deserves to make good use of what he’s wrought, and it’s certainly not the damned duke. It’s me and Percy. We’ve as much a right as anyone. More so, perhaps, because we aren’t extorting kings or selling souls or philosopher’s stones. We’re trying to stay together. I’m trying to keep us together.

  I rebuild my surety of that, one shaky brick at a time, as I lie there in the blood-colored room, which grows darker as the night ages.

  You’re right, you’re right, you’re doing the right thing for the person you love.

  A sliver of moon is visible between the chimneys when Percy comes up and starts shuffling about, dressing for bed. He must think me asleep, for I can tell he’s making a good effort to be as silent as possible. Say something, I tell myself. Apologize. But instead I lie still, pretending to be sleeping, until he gets into bed beside me, our backs to each other with a canyon between us.

  I wait until his breathing evens out into soft snores. Then I get up, put on my shoes, and go belowstairs.

  There are still cinders popping in the study grate, and by their light I spot Percy’s violin case beneath one of the chairs, a wad of loose music bundled beside it. The Baseggio Box is there too, on the desk. The moonlight pearls along the dials. I pick it up and spin the first dial into place. The engraved A is worn down and slick, like it’s been touched often.

  Robles could have lied. He had no real reason to put his trust in me. But he had no one else to turn to, and desperation is a strange soil. It turns up reason like intruding weeds.

  I slide the rest of the dials into place, the first six notes of a song to summon the souls of the dead.

  And then I hear a very soft click.

  The drawer of the box pops out of place and inside, on a bed of dusty silk, is a small brown bone cut to the shape of a key.

  I touch the tip of my finger to the bow, stroking the coarse grain of the bone. A shiver goes through me, like a winter breeze through a window. Somehow, it feels more real with my finger on the key: the gravitas of an alchemical heart that can heal all and the woman who died but not all the way for it. It feels humming, like the moment after the last notes of a song have been played.

  Above me, the floorboards creak.

  We have to leave for Venice—tomorrow. And we have to take this key with us or Percy’s last hope will be gone. If I take it now, in the rush of next morning and the send-off they might not have time to notice. We may have quit Spain entirely before they come calling.

  I can hear footsteps on the stairs, and I know that if I’m going to walk out of the house with the key, I’m going to have to hide it now, so I toss the box onto the desk, then snatch up Percy’s violin case from under the chair and stash the key in the rosin drawer beneath the scroll. I slam the lid shut and slide the case under the desk with my foot as the study door opens.

  I can’t say I’m surprised when Helena appears. I do feel significantly more trapped than I expected to. She’s not very large, but she’s tall, and I am neither of those things. One step over the threshold and she seems to fill the whole room. She’s wrapped in a dressing gown the color of heated bronze. The neckline is gaping, and her hair is down and mussed. And there must be something wrong with me, because my brain briefly flirts with the notion of how gorgeous she is.

  “Mr. Newton said you went to bed,” she says, her voice a smooth purr like a shuffled deck of cards.

  “Came to fetch his violin.” I nudge it with my foot for emphasis.

  She takes a step toward me, the lapels of that open wound of a dressing gown sliding a little farther apart. She’s clearly got nothing under it. “And you dressed to fetch it?”

  “Well . . . didn’t want to be caught wandering about the house in my underthings.” It takes a Herculean effort not to look straight down the neck of her dressing gown when I say that. The lapels give her breasts narrow handholds with which to keep themselves out of sight.

  She’s very close to me now. I can see the brittle shadows her eyelashes cast against her cheeks. I take a step back, and my heels knock into the desk. “I heard you had a bit of trouble with the law earlier.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Did you find what you were after?”

  “I wasn’t after anything. Just stole some potatoes. It was daft.”

  “I mean in prison.”

  My heart stutters. “How did you . . . ? I wasn’t after anything.”

  She tips her head, arms folded and one finger tapping her elbow like she’s keeping time to a melody. “The problem with trusting Dante,” she says, “is that he doesn’t know whose side he’s on.”

  I start to back away from her again, though there’s nowhere for me to go except straight into the desk. I nearly sit atop it just to put more space between us. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I know you saw my father. Did he tell you how to open the box?”

  “We didn’t see your father.”

  “Did you promise to save my mother from the sinking island in exchange for the cipher?”

  “Your mother’s trapped,” I say. I can’t help myself. “Doesn’t that matter to you?”

  Her eyes flash with triumph, and I know I’m caught. “So is my father. Tell me how to open the box.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying. Open it for me.” She reaches for the box, and the moment before her fingers fasten around it, I realize that in my haste to hide the key, I didn’t shut it all the way. When she picks it up, the drawer slides out of place and clatters to the floor, empty.

  We both stare down at it, like it’s a firecracker dropped between us. Then Helena says, “Where is it?”

  I swallow. Lying is pointless at this juncture, but I’m clinging to ignorance with everything in me. “Where’s what?”

  “Where is the key, the damned key that was in here!” She flings the box against the wall and it rebounds with a thunk. I flinch. “What have you done with it?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Where is it?” She makes a snatch for my pocket, and I twist out of the way. “Give it back to me.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  I start for the door, but she shoves me before I get far. My foot catches the edge of the chair and I trip, sitting down hard enough that my teeth clack together. Helena is tearing apart the top of the desk, flinging papers and inkwells and pens to the floor as she searches for the key. Then she moves to the cabinet, wrenching it open so hard that the legs all jump.

  I don’t wait about for her to realize I’ve got it. I snatch up the fiddle case and stagger to my feet, setting a course for the hallway. “Stay where you are,” Helena growls, but that’s not a directive I feel I need obey. I’m not sure where I’m going to go—it’s their house, after all, but at least putting a locked door between us is necessary. I dodge the chair and make a vault for the door. “I said stay—” She grabs me by the arm, dragging me backward and jamming her fist into my shoulder. It pricks like she’s stabbed me with something.

  She has stabbed me with something, I realize as I look down, though not a knife. It’s too fat to be a needle and too thick to be an actual blade, and it’s black and opaque as obsidian, though the color is draining out of it and into me, leaving behind crystal glass. “What are you doing?” I try to wrench it out, but she’s got a beastly good grip, and shoves it deeper into my arm. I feel a shudder through my muscle, and a warm bubble of blood oozes up to the surface of my skin.

  We wrestle for a minute over the needle, and she seems to be getting stronger because it’s she who ends up wrenching the damn thing out of my arm. I stagger backward into the desk. The legs screech. “What was that?”

  She doesn’t reply. I twist around, trying to get a better sense of the wound, but it’s barely a nick, shadow thin. It’s hardly even bleeding, though I swear I felt it go bone deep. I seem
to be victim of the least effective stabbing of all time.

  Helena doesn’t make to stop me, so I start for the door again, but my body doesn’t seem to understand what I’m telling it to do. The fiddle case falls from my hand, and when I reach for it, I miss the handle entirely but my arm carries me into the chair. There’s a crash and suddenly the chair and the fiddle case and I are all on the ground in a broken sprawl. I make another snatch at the case, but in spite of how much mental energy I’m putting into the movement, my arms hardly work. Neither do my legs, I realize, when I try to stand.

  The world starts to ripple like the center of a flame, time turning stretched and distorted. And while I have, admittedly, been this high before, there’s no fun in this. There wasn’t a lot of fun in it before either, but at least then I knew what was happening. Now this insane woman has stuck some sort of poisoned pen in me and I’m fairly certain that my body is losing its ability to perform basic functions at the behest of whatever was inside it.

  Helena is suddenly right overtop of me, her face ghoulish and frightening. With the firelight on her cheekbones, it looks like she’s burning. She’s tearing at my clothes, trying to find the key she seems convinced I’ve hidden there.

  “Stop,” I manage to get out.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She pats my cheek and it rattles through me. “You should be long gone by now.”

  My throat is feeling very closed up and my sight slides into a thin black line. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I hear Helena growl; then she slaps me across the face and everything comes crashing back. The blow turns the world into a splintered looking glass. I can see her face three times above me. “Come on, wake up. Tell me where it is.”

  “You . . . stole it,” I murmur.

  “No, you stole it. It’s mine to begin with—it belongs to us, and I’m going to do what needs to be done with it to save my father. Now, where is it?” When I don’t answer, she hits me again, so hard my neck wrenches. “Tell me. Where—”

  And I can’t fight back or defend myself and suddenly I can hear my father’s voice in my head—Put your hands down—and I’m not sure whether it’s now or one of so many times that I tried to protect myself and wasn’t permitted to.

  She slaps me again. “—is it?”

  Get up and stop crying and put your hands down and look at me when I’m talking to you.

  “What about your mopsy little sister?” Helena grabs my face and forces me to look at her. My vision is falling in and out of focus. “Has she got it? She was lurking here earlier. I’ll find her next.”

  She rolls off me and clambers to her feet, heel snagging in the hem of her dressing gown as she makes for the door. She’s reaching for the handle when suddenly the door bangs open, and she staggers backward. I think for a moment it must have struck her. Then there’s a clang and Helena drops like a stone, collapsing to the floor in a boneless heap. And there on the threshold is Percy, wielding the brass bed warmer with which he’s just clubbed Helena. “God, Monty.” There’s another clang as he tosses it to the ground and drops to his knees beside me.

  The world is making less and less sense. Percy’s trying to shake me awake, and I can hear him calling for Felicity, and the entirety of my strength is devoted to not losing consciousness. “Monty, can you hear me? Monty!”

  I turn my head and vomit. It’s a struggle to breathe, but I don’t know if that’s because I’m choking on my own sick or because part of dying is not breathing so it’s got to happen sometime soon.

  Percy pulls me up into a sitting position, and I start to cough hard. He slaps me on the back, and then suddenly I’m breathing again.

  “Stay awake,” Percy is saying. “Stay awake, stay awake,” and then it sounds like he’s saying, “Stay alive.”

  Put your goddamn hands down, Henry.

  The next thing I know I’m lying on my side on hot, slick cobblestones. Or maybe it’s me that’s hot and slick—my skin feels damp, like I’m drying off from a swim. But my head is on something soft, and I realize it’s Percy’s lap. I’ve got my head in Percy’s lap and he has his fingers on my forehead and he’s smoothing my hair. And the worst part is I’m in such miserable shape I can’t even enjoy it.

  “He’s coming round,” I hear Felicity say. Then, “Monty, can you hear me?”

  My stomach turns over, and I realize what’s about to happen the moment before it does. I wrench away from Percy—my limbs are weak but praise God they at least somewhat obey me—and lurch sideways on my elbows, into what is thankfully a gutter, before I vomit. And then again. And again. And there’s nothing left in me and I’m still on my hands and knees, retching.

  My arms give out, and I nearly go face-first into the cobblestones, but Percy catches me. He holds on to me while I gag, pulling my hair back and rubbing my shoulders until my stomach finally settles, and then he draws me to him, his fingers massaging my skin. I’m sick and shaking and clutching Percy and suddenly I’m thinking of him ill and helpless in Marseilles and how poorly I’d been able to deal with that, and now here he is, knowing just what to do. Perhaps everyone is born with this caring knack in them but me.

  Felicity crouches down in front of me. “Monty?”

  I’m still clinging to Percy like a leech. Felicity reaches out like she’s going to touch my face, but all I can feel is Helena slapping me and the thief-taker raising his hand just to see me flinch and then it’s my father, and all the while me with no power to fight back or protect myself against any of them.

  And I begin to cry.

  Though cry seems far too gentle a word. I begin to abso-bloody-lutely sob.

  Felicity is kind enough to look away. Percy is kind enough not to. He puts his arms around me and lets me turn my face in to his shoulder because I’m trying to stop and that’s making it worse, so stifling it is second-best. “It’s all right,” he says, his hand working in soft circles on my back, which just makes me cry harder. “You’re safe, you’re all right.” And I go on crying, great rolling sobs that rip through my whole body, and I can’t seem to stop. I can hardly breathe. I cry and I cry—it’s years’ worth of it, and it’s years overdue.

  I don’t realize I’ve stopped until I wake up again—I fell asleep or insensible or whatever happens to you when you’re sobbing and trying to rid yourself of a drug. Percy is still holding me, though he’s shifted so that it’s my head on his shoulder, my body curled into his, and one of his arms around the small of my back. My face feels swollen and tight, a shameful reminder of completely losing my mind when I thought about Helena striking me and somehow it turned into my father.

  I sit up, and Percy starts beside me. He must have been dozing. “You’re awake,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” I say, which is the truth. I feel exquisitely more myself than I did before, though still rattled to my core, and my stomach isn’t yet sitting well. A foul taste shakes loose in my throat, and I cough.

  Percy pushes my hair out of my eyes, his thumb lingering upon my temple. I still feel right up against the verge of tears, so I press my face into the crook of my elbow, like there’s anything subtle about that. “What happened?”

  “We ran.” He offers a small smile. “Only a few hours earlier than we were planning to anyway.”

  “What about Helena? And Dante?”

  “We were gone before Helena came to. And Felicity stuck a chair under the handle of Dante’s bedroom door, though I don’t think he would have done anything to stop us. She’s very dastardly, your sister.”

  “Did you get your fiddle?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Your fiddle. Have you got it?”

  “It’s only a fiddle, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” He shifts so I can see where it’s sitting on his other side.

  Warm relief floods me—the first pleasant sensation I’ve enjoyed in days. “Where’s Felicity?” I scrub my hands hard against my eyes, then peer down the street in either direction.
We’re under a long, cobbled bridge, a canal lapping at the gutter in front of us. The smell is rancid—rotted fruit and piss and sewage stewing in the heat. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere near the docks. Felicity’s gone to see about a boat back to France.”

  “We’re going back?”

  “Where else would we go?”

  We’re interrupted by the slap of wooden heels on cobblestones, and a moment later Felicity sinks down on my other side. “You’re awake.”

  “So are you.”

  “I think your case is a bit more noteworthy.” She puts the back of her hand against my cheek, the movement a bit stuttered, likes she’s afraid I might start to cry again. “Your color’s much better. And you’re not so cold.”

  “We’re going to get cut up and sold back to Father in pieces down here.”

  “Oh, Monty, you’re so dramatic.” She tests my pulse with two fingers, then asks, “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Helena poisoned me.”

  Felicity gives a little sigh through her nose. “She did not poison you.”

  “She stabbed me with something.” I pull up my sleeve to show her, but the mark from the needle is gone. “And then everything went wrong.”

  “It was the Atropa belladonna.”

  “The what?”

  “Sleeping nightshade—one of the alchemical cure-alls they had in their cabinent. It’s not a poison, it’s an anesthetic that sends the body into a temporary comatose state to heal. It made you look . . . quite dead.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “Obviously,” Felicity says, at the same time Percy murmurs, “Thank God.”

  I sit up straight, pulling my legs up to my chest with a wince. “We need to get away from here, before the Robleses find us.”

  “Why would they care what happens to us?” Felicity says. “It’s not good that we know about their mother’s alchemical heart, but I imagine they’ll have other things on their mind now that they’ve got their box back.”