The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2)(38)
“I’m so sorry!” I take a step forward, as if there’s anything I can do to help, but as soon as I’m properly in the firelight, he catches sight of my dress and yelps. “It’s just wine!” I cry. “I spilled wine. And fell into a cake.” I’m pushing my skirts behind me, like I might hide the stain from his view, but there’s not much to be done about the fact that I have just snuck up on him in a dark room and the first thing I did was assure him I’m not covered in blood. And here I thought nothing could be worse than our meeting after supper.
“Do you need something?” he asks, his voice clipped. He’s still trying to collect any of the spilled snuff that can be salvaged.
“Yes, I, um, I shouted at you earlier. In the hallway. After supper.”
“And now you’ve come to yell at me again?” He gives up on the snuff and slumps back down in his chair, running a hand over his cropped hair and looking around for something to do that will dismiss me. I’m tempted to ask him if I could excuse myself, take a good, deep breath, then reenter and try this entire encounter again but this time with my head on straight. And preferably no wine spilled down my dress.
“I’m sorry about the snuff,” I say, feeling like a kicked puppy that only wanted a pat on the head. “I can replace it.” He sighs, one leg bouncing up and down so that his shadow in the firelight jumps. There’s a smear of it still on his lapel, and against the dark material, there are flecks of incandescent blue hidden in it. “It is snuff, isn’t it?”
“It’s madak,” he says, the word presented in a tone of expectation that the other party will not recognize it.
But I do. “That’s opium and tobacco.”
He gives me the first proper look since I arrived. I wouldn’t say he looks impressed, but he’s certainly not indifferent. “From Java, yes.”
“There are more effective ways to take opium,” I say. “Medicinally speaking, dissolved in alcohol and drunk will move through the body much faster and more effectively, as it is the most direct route to the digestive system.”
He squints at me, and I immediately feel foolish for explaining laudanum to Alexander Platt. But instead he says, “Who are you, exactly?”
“I’m a great admirer of yours. Academically,” I add quickly. “Not . . . I know you’re getting married. Not like that. But I’ve read all your books. Most of them. All the ones I could get. Some of them I read twice so perhaps that makes up for the ones I missed. But I’ve read most. I’m Felicity Montague.” I stick out my hand, like he might shake it. When he makes no move to, I pretend that my intention all along was to brush something off my skirt. A large glob of dried pastry cream crumbles onto the carpet. We both look at it. I consider picking it up, but, having nothing to then do with it, I instead look back at him with a sheepish smile.
To my great relief, he returns it. “An admirer?” He pours himself a glass of whatever amber spirit is in the bottle on the mantel, then says, “My admirers are usually much older and grayer and . . . well, men. They’re usually men.”
“Yes, sir, that’s actually what I came to talk to you about. Not the men. But that I’m a woman. No, this is coming out entirely wrong.” I press my hands to my stomach and force myself to take a breath so deep I swear my ridiculous stays pop. “I’ve been trying to gain admission to a medical school in Edinburgh, but they won’t have me on account of my sex. When I made inquiries in London, I was given your name by Dr. William Cheselden.” I fish around in my pocket, unwrapping the calling card from my list and handing it to him. “He said you were in London looking for a fellow. Or an assistant. Or something, for an expedition. And he thought you might take me on.”
Platt listens without interrupting, which I appreciate, but he also keeps his face entirely unreadable, which I appreciate less, as I’m unsure what effect my speech is having upon him and whether I should press on with it until he says, “I’m not sure where Cheselden got the impression I was looking for a fellow, but I’m not.”
“Oh.” All the breath leaves my lungs in that single exhalation and yet it still comes out very small. I have to look down at my feet to make certain I’m still standing and not on my knees, for the world feels to have dropped away from me so suddenly, it’s like falling. I’ve never felt so foolish in my whole life, not being thrown from the university in Scotland or standing before the governors in London or when my mother presented me with enrollment in finishing school like she was making all my dreams for education come true. I’ve come all this way. I’ve bargained and begged and compromised so much. I didn’t realize how much hope I had pinned to this moment, and how little I had truly let myself consider the possibility of defeat, until it’s snuffed me out like a candle. My whole world reformed in a second by the dashing of a hope I have not just lived with, but lived inside.
My collapse must be more obvious than I hoped, for Platt turns Cheselden’s card over between his fingers, then says, “You really came all the way here to ask me about a position?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice just as small and just as kinked up with disappointment as before. I swipe the heel of my hand against my cheek, then add, “And I know Johanna. I’m not here entirely under pretense.”
Platt’s glass halts at his lips. “You do?”