The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(18)
Monty is looking far less enthusiastic than I’d anticipated—I had even been willing to let him hug me had he offered, but instead he’s rubbing the back of his neck with a frown. “That was . . . something.”
“Try not to sound too excited.”
“He was bloody patronizing to you.”
“Much less than anyone else was. And he gave me a card!” I wave the creamy stock engraved with Cheselden’s name and office address at him. “And told me to write to Dr. Platt—the Dr. Alexander Platt. You know, I was telling you about him yesterday at breakfast.”
“The one who lost his license to practice surgery?” he says.
“Because he’s a radical,” I reply. “He doesn’t think like the other doctors. I’m certain that’s why.” Monty scuffs his toe against the pavement, eyes downcast. I press the card between my hands like I’m praying over it. “I’m going to go to Stuttgart. I have to meet him.”
“What was that?” Monty’s head snaps up. “What happened to writing?”
“A letter will not get his attention in the way I need to,” I reply. “I’m going to show up and introduce myself, and he’ll be taken with me and offer me the position.”
“You think you’re just going to show up on his doorstep and he’s going to hire you?”
“No, I’m going to go to the wedding and dazzle him with my exceptional promise and work ethic, and then he will hire me. And,” I add, though I know this trail is more treacherous, “I know Johanna Hoffman—you remember her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he replies, “but I didn’t think you two parted on good terms.”
“So we had a small falling-out,” I say with a flippant wave to undercut the grandness of this understatement. “Doesn’t mean it won’t seem perfectly innocent for me to show up at her wedding. We’re friends! I’m celebrating with her!”
“And how will you pay your way there?” he asks. “Travel is expensive. London is expensive—is Dr. Platt going to pay you for this work? Because as much as Percy and I adore you, sharing our bed is not a long-term living arrangement I am thrilled about. If he had a job for you that was studying medicine or working toward some kind of degree or license, that would be one thing, but it sounds like you’d be taken advantage of.”
“Well, maybe I’m going to let him take advantage of me. Not like . . .” I blow out a sharp breath, and it comes out wispy and white against the cold air. “You know what I mean.”
“Come on, Feli.” Monty reaches out for my hand, but I pull away. “You’re too smart for that.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” I cry, and it comes out ferocious. “I can’t give up on medicine, and I can’t go back to Edinburgh, and I can’t marry Callum—I just can’t!” The only reason I’m not crying is that I’m so aggravated by the fact that I’m almost crying again. I haven’t cried in ages—even those first gray, lonely weeks in Edinburgh I had been stiff-lipped and stout-hearted—but in the space of a single hour, I’ve been on the verge of it three times. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life hiding the things I love behind the covers of books that are considered appropriate for my sex. I want this too much to not try every last damn thing possible to make it happen. Fine, now you may hug me.”
He does. It is not my favorite. But if he can’t understand the hurt, I can at least let him apply a familiar balm. I stand in his arms, my cheek pressed against the scratchy wool of his coat, and let myself be held.
“Everyone wants things,” Monty says. “Everyone’s got a hunger like that. It passes. Or it gets easier to live with. It stops eating you up inside.”
I scrunch my nose and sniff. Maybe everyone has hunger like this—impossible, insatiable, but all-consuming in spite of it all. Maybe the desert dreams of spilling rivers, valleys of a view. Maybe that hunger will one day pass.
But if it does, I will be left shelled and halved and hollowed out, and who can live like that?
5
By the next evening, Monty and I have descended from civilized point-and-counterpoint to full-on bickering on the subject of my going to Stuttgart.
It is our only topic of conversation as the three of us walk to the pub in Shadwell called the Minced Nancy, which from the name alone brands itself a place where mollies like my brother and his beau can be together openly. We’re supping with Scipio and his sailors, whom Monty and Percy have been conspiring for a reunion with since their crew docked several weeks previous. The pavement is narrow, and we walk with me squashed between Monty and Percy, all of us tripping over one another in an attempt to huddle against the cold and also avoid being mowed down by carts. The air reeks of burning pitch from the riverside, so strong I’ll be swallowing the smell all night. Soot falls in great clumps, as London sets everything that burns aflame to keep warm. Lacking coinage to spare for a lamplighter, our only illumination comes from the spitting spray off the knife grinders’ wheels and the blacksmiths stamping out their embers for the day as we pass their shops. By the time we find the address, I’m so tired of being cold and wet and hearing my brother’s infuriatingly sensible arguments about why I should not go to Stuttgart on a whim that I’m ready to turn around and return to the flat as soon as we arrive.