The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(33)

Her face relaxes, lips falling back into their painted part.

I swallow. “I mean, I shouldn’t have had to write, because I should have apologized after your father died. Before you left. I should have apologized, and we should have been writing each other all this time because we were friends. And I’m sorry I didn’t do any of that.”

“I wish you had.” The dog rests his head upon her lap, and she strokes his nose absently, her eyes still on me.

“I’m sorry I’m here,” I say. “I can leave, if you want.”

From out in the hallway, I swear I hear Sim choke.

“No,” Johanna says quickly. “No, don’t leave. I want you to stay.”

I take perhaps my first deep breath since we left England, so loud it rivals Max’s consumptive snuffles. “Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am. I mean, if I were you, I wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

She stands up, her hand disappearing again into the folds of her dog. Her skirt fans around her, a cascade of brocade silk and too many petticoats, the edges fringed with lace and bows. When she looks at me, I am disarmed. “Well then,” she says, and I don’t know how I shall survive these next few days without drowning in her. “Lucky you’re not me.”





8


At dinner, I expect I shall get my first glimpse of Alexander Platt.

The dining room is crowded, and I am relegated to a place of dishonor as far from the head of the table, where Johanna’s uncle Herr Hoffman sits, as is possible. I practically need a telescope to see him, and Johanna sitting beside him, with another empty chair beside her. Maddeningly empty, and no doubt reserved for her intended.

It is still empty when the first course is served. It is still empty when the man beside me, who has to keep putting down his knife to pick up his ear trumpet, asks me, “How do you know Miss Hoffman?”

“We were friends as children,” I say, jamming a frustrated knife at my mutton.

“Excuse me?”

“We grew up together,” I say louder.

He cups a hand to the end of his ear trumpet. “What?”

“Friends.”

“What?”

I nearly fling my knife down. “We were accomplices in a massive diamond heist in which we stole jewels off the neck of the queen of Prussia, and now I’m here to claim what is owed me by any means necessary.”

“Excuse me?” The woman next to me leans forward in alarm, but the man just smiles. “Oh, how nice.”

To top the fact that Alexander Platt is not even here, the dress Sim purchased in town was made with a waistline that can only be described as aspirational. Sim had to fish me out of the silk and tighten my stays three times before I achieved the inconceivably small diameter deemed appropriate for a lady to make an impression at a social occasion. My bulbous shoulders feel likely to burst free at any moment.

It’s hard to focus on the meal when I’m thinking about Dr. Platt, and when I can’t properly breathe, and also every time Johanna laughs, my heartbeat stammers. How is it, I wonder, that the brain and the heart can be so at odds and yet have such a profound effect upon the functions of the other?

Dr. Platt has still not arrived by the end of dinner. The men go to the formal sitting room, while the ladies make their way upstairs. I, for longer than is natural, stand in the hallway, weighing my options but likely looking as though I’m a shape-shifting fairy-tale creature able to choose which sex I would rather be for the evening. If Dr. Platt is to show up, he will certainly not be up in Johanna’s rooms with the ladies. And I am not here to waste time talking about ribbon and music and whatever other insubstantial nonsense gets passed around in rooms full of women.

I start toward the parlor, hoping that if I walk with enough confidence I’ll not be stopped, but the hairy-eared butler has me by the collar before I’ve crossed the threshold. “The ladies are upstairs, Miss Montague.”

“Oh.” I smile but do not attempt the eyelash bat again. “I’ve just got one quick thing to say to Herr Hoffman and then I’ll follow.”

He is unmoved. “I can convey the message to him.”

“Oh, thank you, but actually I lost an earring here earlier and I wanted to look for it.”

“I’ll search for you.”

I pretend to see someone in the room over his shoulder and wave. “I’ll be right in!” I call to this imaginary person. The butler doesn’t move. I consider faking a fainting spell just for an excuse to call for a doctor and hope it’s Platt, but that hardly seems an appropriate situation to then funnel into an intellectual discussion. “Please,” I say to the butler, and I hate how pleading my voice sounds. I do not like pleading—reliance upon the whims of others makes me far too vulnerable to feel comfortable.

“Excuse me,” someone says behind me, and the butler pulls me out of the way so the man can pass into the room.

I glance sideways and recognize him at once from the etching of his likeness on the title page of Treaties on Human Blood and Its Movement through the Body.

“Alexander Platt,” I blurt.

He stops. Turns back to me. “Can I help you?” It’s not a courteous question—it’s brusque and annoyed.

He looks exactly like himself, but more rumpled than I expected. He’s unshaven, dark stubble in sharp contrast to his blond wig with its ratty queue. His housecoat is not the sort of thing you’d wear to a party before your wedding in which you’re trying to make a good impression in the home of your bride. He has an intense gaze, small dark eyes made smaller by a fringe of thick brows, and when he frowns at me, I forget every word I know.