The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(20)

She raises her head. Her face doesn’t change, but I can feel the rehearsed nature of this bit, like she has been called upon to do it more than once and is growing tired. “I hate it.”

“Why do you hate it?” he goads.

“Too many white men,” she replies. Ebrahim laughs. Sim doesn’t. Across the table, she meets my eyes, and some invisible string seems to tighten between us. Her head cants to the side as she inspects me. It makes me feel like a specimen pinned open on a corkboard for students to study.

I’m given an excuse to look away when Scipio says to me, “How have you taken to the north? Percy said you’d been in Scotland.”

“She’s already tired of Scotland,” Monty answers. To compensate for his deafness, he’s taken to either staring with off-putting intensity at whoever he’s speaking to or turning away so his good ear is toward them. I know it’s necessary for his hearing, but the latter makes it look as though he isn’t paying attention, magnifying the already dismissive air he’s prone to giving off. I shouldn’t be annoyed by it, but I’m an easily stoked fire tonight. Monty pokes me in the ribs with his elbow. “Maybe Scipio will take you to the Continent.”

When I don’t smile, Scipio looks between us. “Are you traveling again?”

“No. Monty is being cruel,” I say.

“I’m not being cruel!” he protests. “It was an honest suggestion! You’ve got no other means to travel.”

I glare at him. “And you know Stuttgart is entirely landlocked, don’t you?”

“I do now,” he says into his beer.

Across from me, Sim’s head snaps up. She has both fists resting on the table, knuckles notched into each other and her thumbs pressed into a steeple.

“What business is taking you to Stuttgart?” Ebrahim asks.

I let out a heavier sigh than I mean to, and my spectacles fog. “My friend Johanna Hoffman is getting married.”

It seems the simplest explanation, but leave it to Monty to show off the dirty underside of everything. “She wants to go to Stuttgart because her friend is marrying a famous doctor Felicity’s obsessed with and wants to work for.”

“I am not obsessed with Alexander Platt,” I snap.

“She’s been turned down by every surgeon and hospital in Edinburgh, and she doesn’t have any money or way to travel, but she’s still ready to go gallivanting off because Dr. Cheese Den told her that this Platt fellow is theoretically possibly maybe hiring a secretary.” Monty looks to Scipio. “Tell her it’s a terrible idea.”

I want to kick Monty under the table, but there are so many legs tangled up I’m afraid I’d misjudge and dig an unwarranted toe into an innocent stander by. “It is not a terrible idea,” I snap before Scipio can answer him. “And it’s Cheselden. Not cheese den.”

“Do you have any opposition to oysters and eggs for supper?” Scipio calls down the table, interrupting Monty and me before we can properly show our claws. “Georgie, come help me carry plates.”

As soon as they’ve gone and Ebrahim has turned down to converse with the other two men, I give my brother a hard stare. I would have tossed that mug of warm beer in his face if I hadn’t suspected I’d soon need it, as I am no great lover of oysters.

In return, he adopts a wide-eyed innocence. “What’s that look for?”

I lean in, my tone clipped as a fingernail. “First, you don’t have to be a smug prick about the fact that I don’t have money or means to travel or that I was barred from the hospital, because in spite of what you and Callum and everyone else seem to want, I am not going to give up and settle down. Second, you are not in control of my actions simply because you are the closest man to me. What I do is not up to you, nor to anyone, particularly someone so ignorant of the difficulties of my current position. And third, Monty, that’s my leg.”

The ascent his foot has been making up my thigh halts. Percy peers under the table, where his legs are stretched out parallel to mine, then pats his own knee. “Is this what you’re after?”

Monty flops backward into the booth, raising a puff of dust from the upholstery. “You can’t be serious about traveling, Fel. It’s insane.”

“No more than giving up your inheritance to live a skilless sod in London,” I snap. “You’re a professional card player, remember; you’re not curing cholera.”

“Stop it, both of you,” Percy interrupts, a hand going up over the table between us like he’s refereeing a boxing match. “This is meant to be a nice evening, and you’re ruining it.” There’s a pause, then he says to Monty with a frown, “My legs aren’t actually thinner than Felicity’s, are they?”

“Oh, stop it, Perce, you know you have magnificent calves,” Monty says, then adds, “And Felicity has very hairy socks.”

“Magnificent calves,” I scoff. “Could you have picked a less erogenous body part?”

It was an unwise door to open, for Percy pipes up, “Monty has nice shoulders.”

Monty pillows his cheek upon his fist in a swoon. “Do you really think so, darling?”

“You think he’s got deep dimples in his cheeks,” Percy says to me, “you should see his shoulders.”