The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  “We’re not sailing the Eleftheria to your sinking island.”

  “Why not? We’ll plow straight over the soldiers in their gondolas.”

  “Not much subtlety in that. We’ll take the longboats.”

  On the street, someone shrieks, followed by a chorus of boisterous laughter. I can’t help myself—I glance out the window. The rain has stopped, leaving the glass speckled with water droplets that shine like pearls against the darkness. “What’s going on out of doors?”

  “It’s the Festa del Redentore. Feast of the Redeemer. Everyone’s drunk and masked and rowdy.”

  The candlelight on the table flickers, and Scipio and I both look up as Percy slides into the booth beside me, two mugs in hand. “I didn’t see you come in,” he says to Scipio. “I would have gotten you something.”

  “No need.” Scipio stands, pulling his hat on. “I’ll have some of my men watch the patrols tonight and see if we can anticipate any chance to slip through. I’ll fetch you from here when we’re ready to sail.”

  “Where are we sailing?” Percy asks.

  “Out to the island.” I nudge the vellum in his direction. His eyes scan the page.

  “We’ll go in the morning, as quick as we can,” Scipio says. “Is that a problem?”

  “No, that’s . . . soon,” Percy says.

  A band takes up on the street outside, a whole slew of voices joining it in drunken song. Scipio sighs through his nose. “The sooner we can quit this place, the better.”

  “What about our ransom?” I ask.

  “We’ll have to do the exchange elsewhere. Once we have your spoils from the island, we’ll move to Santorini, in the Aegean. Our buyers there will harbor us while you write to your families. I’m not staying here for months waiting for them to send someone for you if there are posters everywhere advertising a reward for your capture. Stay out of sight tonight.”

  “We will,” Percy says, but Scipio swats his hat at him as he departs.

  “Not you I’m worried about.”

  I make a face at his back, then take one of the mugs from Percy—the one he didn’t half finish between the bar and the booth—and down most of it in four swallows. Percy is still staring at the notice, folding and unfolding its corner with his thumb. A black crinoline crushes up against the other side of the window beside our table like the wings of a raven as a woman stumbles, the crowd pushing her from all sides. His gaze flits up. “Sounds like a gay occasion on the street.”

  “Sounds like the sounds of . . .” I give up halfway through that sentence—too many versions of the same word and not enough of a preliminary idea where I was going with it—and instead put my forehead against his shoulder.

  Percy laughs. “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Mmm. Some.”

  “Some?”

  “Some of the drink.”

  “Well, there’s my answer.” He slides the glass he just brought me out of my reach.

  “Ha, I already finished that. Wait, where are you going?”

  “We are going up to bed. You’re bashed and I’m shattered.”

  “No, come here.” I grab his hand as he stands and pull him back down onto the bench beside me. He nearly lands in my lap. He laughs, but doesn’t let go of my hand, instead tucking his thumb against my palm and giving my fingers a soft squeeze. Recklessness rises suddenly inside me, like flotsam disrupted from the seafloor, at the feeling of his skin against mine and that terribly fond smile flirting with his lips. “I want to go out.”

  “That is a terrible idea. We are being hunted, remember?” He pokes at the notice.

  “It’s a large city. And a party.”

  “Are those meant to hide us, or are you listing things you enjoy?”

  “What’s the use of temptations if we don’t yield to them?”

  “That’ll be chiseled upon your tombstone.” He presses his shoulder to mine. “Come on, bed. Scipio told you to stay in.”

  “No, he said stay out of sight. They’re entirely unrelated. And we’re not sailing until the morning, so he’ll never know. And we shall wear masks like everyone else and be out of sight entirely.” I blow at a strand of hair that has come loose over his ear. “Please come. I feel like we haven’t been together in a long while and I want to be out. With you. Specifically. Out with you.” I bring our still-clasped hands up to my mouth and deal a quick kiss to his knuckles.

  Even before he speaks, I know what his answer will be—it’s written in the way his whole being melts like tallow when my lips touch his skin. He lets out a dramatic sigh, then says, “You are an enormously stubborn pain in the arse when you want to be, you know that?”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes, I’ll come out.”

  “Really? No, don’t answer—I shan’t give you a chance to change your mind. Let’s away!” Our hands fall apart when I stand, but he keeps his fingers upon the small of my back as I lead him from the booth, across the packed barroom, and out into the steaming, raucous night.

  The rain has taken a recess, though the clouds are still coffered and low. Percy and I follow the masses to the square of Saint Mark’s, which is a riot of people. Everyone’s drinking—a creative array of libations are being sold from carts, and we taste some fine wine from silver tastevins and then some less-fine wine from less-fine cups, sharing a glass between us like we’ve done our whole lives, though suddenly it feels strangely intimate to put my mouth where his was just a moment before. Someone hands us masks made from stretched animal skin and dyed black-and-white, and Percy ties mine for me, his hands twining in my hair before he draws me back for a look with his fingers linked behind my neck. I laugh at his mask, and with a wide smile he flicks at the long nose of mine. As we shoulder our way down the street, we walk close enough that our hands sometimes knock.

  The air is full of colored smoke, drifting from firecrackers and bottle rockets set off from the bridges and over the water. Music is playing from so many different places that all the notes tangle into a strange, dissonant symphony. People are dancing. They are standing and singing and arguing and laughing. They are lounging on the bridges, packed into gondolas and hanging off the prows, shrouded in the light from lanterns and firecrackers and torches, on balconies and in doorways, touching each other like the whole city is familiar. I see a ginger-haired man lean over the rail of a bridge and lift his mask so he can deliver a quick kiss to another man with a thick beard, and, zounds, I never want to leave this place.

  I glance over to check if Percy saw that, but beneath the mask I can’t tell. It’s hard for me to think of anything other than what he might be thinking, and what this night means to him, and if it’s the same as for me. Here, in the bellow of this music and the torchlight dyed as it flickers through the Murano glass that lines the shop windows, it’s easy to pretend we’re sweethearts, ordinary as anything, out for a night together in a brilliant city we have never known. Though I could have done without any of it—the drinking and the partying and the revelers in a whirlpool around us—so long as Percy and I were together. The world could have been a blank canvas and I still would have been exactly this livid with happiness, just to be with him.

  The crowds thin as we wander from the Grand Canal and the square of Saint Mark’s. Revelers stumble in pairs and small knots, their faces still covered, and most heading for the basilica square. When we cross the next bridge into an empty alley, I make a snatch for Percy’s hand, and he laces his fingers with mine and gives them a squeeze.

  Fetch me a couch, for I nearly swoon.

  “Aren’t you glad we came out?” I say, swinging our hands between us. “It’s like being back home.”

  “Except not at all and so much better.”

  “Better because the gin doesn’t taste like piss.”

  “And no one wants to play bleeding billiards.”

  “And there’s no Richard Peele.”

  “WE HATE RICHARD PEELE!” he shouts, which gets me laughing so good I have to stop
walking.

  “See, this is what our Tour was meant to be like,” I say as he drags me after him down the street. “There have been far more thrilling heroics than advertised.”

  “Thrilling heroics suit you, though.”

  “You know what suits you?”

  “Hm?”

  “That bit of a beard.”

  I snatch his mask off so I can get a better look, and he laughs, one hand flitting to the scruff along his jawline like he might wipe it away. “Go on, mock me all you want.”

  “No—I mean it. I like it. You look good.”

  “So do you.” He tugs the mask off my face, that fond smile again curling about his mouth, though it slips as he qualifies, “I mean, you always look good. But now you look . . . not good. Wait. I mean yes, good, you always look good, but you don’t look good so much as you look . . . better? Dear Lord. Ignore me.”

  Under that handsome scruff, his face is rather red. I smile, and Percy laughs again, then swings his arm around my neck and pulls me against him, pressing his lips to my forehead.

  The street is still shiny with the afternoon rain, and the canals are jumping as the first soft drops of a new rainstorm strike them. The lantern light shafts across the black water in cords and whorls. And Percy is right there beside me on that beautiful, glowing street and he is just as beautiful and glowing as it is. The stars dust gold leafing on his skin. And we are looking at each other, just looking, and I swear there are whole lifetimes lived in those small, shared seconds.

  It takes a moment—an embarrassingly long moment—of resting in his gaze and mentally encouraging myself before I lay my hand upon his cheek and bring my face up to his. It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very much like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.

  I nearly start to cry when his lips touch mine in return. Pain and ecstasy live tight-knit in my heart. It’s a very gentle kiss at first—closemouthed and chaste, one of his hands rising to cradle my chin, as if each of us wants to be certain the other is in earnest. Then his lips part a smidge, and I nearly lose my head. I grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him against me, so forcefully that I hear the seam at the neck pop. He takes a deep breath as his hands go under my coat, his mouth firm for a moment before it softens and then opens against mine. His tongue snakes between my teeth.

  We’re so wrapped up in each other that we stumble a bit, and he presses me backward against the alley wall, bending down so I don’t have to stand quite as high on my toes to reach his mouth. The bricks tear at my coat like briars as I pull his hips to mine so I can feel him going stiff. We’re so close that there’s not a thing between us but the rain, each drop feeling like it might sizzle and spark on my skin—a spitting quench against molten metal.

  He’s fiddling with the waistband of my trousers, and a shock goes through me when his cold fingers meet the bare skin along my stomach. “Do you want to . . . ?” His voice comes out ragged and breathless, and he doesn’t finish, just hooks his finger in my waistband and tugs.

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, yes, absolutely, yes.”

  I’m already fumbling with the buttons along the flap, cursing everything I drank that’s now making my fingers fat and awkward, but Percy stops me. “Not here, you tomcat. There are people about.”

  “There are no people about.”

  As though prompted, someone calls to his mate from the other end of the street. A few dark silhouettes run through a barrel of lamplight. I reach for the buttons anyway, but Percy threads his fingers between mine and pulls my hand away. “Stop. I won’t let you take your trousers off in the middle of the street. That is a terrible idea.”

  “Right. Well. Shall we keep kissing until we think of a better one?”

  He brushes his mouth against the corner of mine, and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it takes every ounce of the not-inconsiderable restraint I’ve spent years exercising around Percy not to rip all my clothes off right then, passersby be damned. But I am nothing if not a gentleman, and a gentleman does not take his trousers off in a public place, particularly if the great love of his life is asking him to refrain.

  “What if we went away together?” he says.

  “Back to the inn? Because I could certainly take my trousers off there.”

  “No, I mean after this is over.”

  “What’s over?”

  “This Tour. This year.” He kisses me on the forehead—a soft, breathy peck. His face is bright. “What if you didn’t go home and I didn’t go to Holland and instead we went somewhere together?”

  “Where somewhere?”

  “London. Paris. Jakarta, Constantinople, anywhere—I don’t care.”

  “And what would we do there?”

  “Make a life together.”

  “You mean leave forever? We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’d have nothing.”

  “We’d have each other. Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s not.” I don’t mean for it to come out so abrupt, but it slaps that dreamy excitement off Percy’s face. His brow furrows.

  “But if we left together, I wouldn’t have to be put away. If I was with you . . .”

  I can’t quite wrap my head around this strange reversal between us, because it is always Percy who is the sensible one and me with the feverish notions. But here he is, proposing we run away together with nothing but each other like some sort of star-crossed pair in a broadside ballad, and while my heart is ready to burst for loving him, love is not a thing you survive upon. You can’t eat love.

  “Think it through, Perce. We’d have no money. No livelihood. I’d lose my title, I’d lose my inheritance. We’d ruin our reputations—we could never go back.”

  “I can’t go back, no matter what.” When I don’t say anything to that, he takes a step away from me, our hands falling apart. “And what about your father? You’d go back—to him, and that estate work, English society—before you’d go away with me? God, Monty, what are you more afraid of—him or not having all the privilege his money buys you?”

  Now it’s my turn to step away. I’m not certain how we’ve slid from his hands down my trousers to the sharpest Percy’s ever spoken to me. It makes my head spin. “Come on, Perce, be sensible.”

  “Sensible? I’m being put away in a madhouse at the end of this year and you’re telling me to be sensible?”

  “Or—” I almost reach for his hand, like touching him will somehow tamp the anger and panic puncturing his words. “Or we find the panacea and it works and you can come home with me because you’ve been cured.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want the cure-all. If we find it, I’m not going to use it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not going to take this woman’s life so I can be well again. And I don’t think I have to be well to be happy. God.” He takes another step away from me, head tipped back to the sky. “I should have said that ages ago.”

  “Ages? How long have you been thinking this?”

  “Since Dante told us about his mother—before that, even. Monty, I’ve never wanted it.”

  “Never?”

  “Not never—at first, the idea of finding Mateu Robles and him having something that could make these fits easier to manage was appealing, because epilepsy is hard. It is so hard to be ill. But I’m not going to take someone else’s life—it’s not worth that.”

  “So, why did you let us come all this way?”

  “Let you?” he repeats, the words feathered by an astonished laugh. “I didn’t let you—you never gave me a choice. You never gave me a choice about anything—about speaking to Mateu Robles or taking the key or going with the pirates. You never think what anyone else might want but you! And now you’re only interested in being together if it doesn’t require any sacrifices
on your part.”

  “And you using the panacea is—what, a sacrifice for you to be well again? Are you sacrificing your illness for me?”

  “What do you want me to say? Yes, I’m ill. I’m an epileptic—that’s my lot. It isn’t easy and it isn’t very enjoyable but this is what I’ve got to live with. This is who I am, and I don’t think I’m insane. I don’t think I should be locked up and I don’t think I need to be cured of it for my life to be good. But no one seems to agree with me on that, and I was hoping you’d be different, but apparently you think just the same as my family and my doctors and everyone else.”

  I am losing ground. It’s giving out from under me, all the certainty I’d nursed over the past few weeks since learning of the key and the heart, certainty about him and me and us and how all that needed to happen to go back to the way we were was for Percy to be cured, but I’m realizing suddenly that this has always been Percy. It was never a barrier until I knew, so it’s not something wrong with him. It’s just me who’s driven this wedge between us. “But we’d have the panacea! If we ran away together now, you’d still be ill—nothing would change.”

  He folds his arms. “So which is it—do you want me to be well to keep me from an asylum, or so you don’t have to deal with me being ill?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s both, all right? I don’t want to lose you to an asylum, but this . . . It would be so much easier on both of us if you were well. God, Perce, we’ve got enough in our way, why this too?”

  “Whatever things we have standing in our way, this isn’t one.”

  “Fine.” I wrench the key out of my pocket and throw it to him—perhaps a bit more at him than to him. “There. Now it’s yours. Do whatever you want. Make yourself well or run away or toss it in the goddamn sea for all I care.”