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Percy coughs. At the vanity, the hair-dresser is holding the cone over Monty’s face as he powders his hair, talking professional nonsense in a soothing voice. The powder drifts in a fine haze through the room, coating his throat with the floury scent of lavender. His own hair is left plain; every hair-dresser he has met has been sadly puzzled at it, and so he plaited it himself for the ball.
They are come to London for the winter; Lord Montague wrenched Monty out of Eton for the season, under the premise of making him fit for polite society. Percy has grave doubts that this will be effective. The fine houses of the Town are a whirlwind of dissipation at this time of year; the court no better, and full of scheming intriguers besides; Parliament, from all he hears, worse than the other two together. If Lord Montague hopes to cure his son of wildness here, he is much to be pitied.
The hair-dresser is packing up his things, and Monty thanking him; he should be standing, not still sprawled in his chair, but his pretty smile smooths away any offense. It always has. When the door closes, he springs to his feet and bows to Percy.
“Mr. Newton, may I hope to dance the next with you?”
He laughs. “Piss off.”
Monty staggers, fiddles with his lace, makes a show of flustered nerves. “How rude! I must work on my graces, if this is the reception they meet. Come, how do I look?”
In truth, very taking– he strikes an exaggerated pose, and the full skirts of his coat flare out in a swirl of rose-colored silk. His dark hair is storm-cloud gray with powder, rolled into loose, fashionable curls at the sides of his face, and swept into a queue at the back. The long brocaded waistcoat with its vibrant pattern is open almost to his waist, and the lace ruffles of his shirt spill out. The frippery and finery somehow only serve to emphasize the neatness of his figure.
The air is quite clear now, but Percy wants to cough again. He contains himself. “You look quite well,” he says, as mildly as he can. “What is that–” he taps the brocade– “a peacock?”
“You, sir, are impertinent!” Monty barks, in a hoarse, comical voice that must be an imitation of one of his tutors. “A scoundrel, sir, who hath not the manners his Maker gave him! Perce, your neckcloth is askew.”
Without the least hesitation, Monty reaches up and fixes it for him. Percy does not know where to look; he ought to be finished with this by now, this ridiculous schoolboy infatuation. He has never even been to Eton. But every year Monty returns, more ungovernable and more attractive than ever, and his heart leaps when he steps from the carriage.
In only a few months, they will embark on the Grand Tour that every young man destined for an earldom is expected to make. Only a few months, and then Monty will be shot of him.
“Are you wool-gathering again?”
He shakes himself. “I did try, but the sheep were too quick for me. Let’s not be late.”
“Just so!” Monty turns with the precision of a boy who has had many dancing-masters and strides out of the room, his heels clicking against the floor. Percy spares himself a last glance in the mirror: presentable enough in deep, sober red and blue wool. Rather military, actually.
Fix bayonets, he thinks to himself, and follows out of the door.
The ballroom is crowded, brilliant, and stifling hot. After the biting chill of the December evening outside, the light and heat are a shock to his system. A cascade of introductions begins the instant they are through the door: “Lord Montague; Lord Disley his son; Mr. Newton. Viscount Disley and his companion Mr. Newton…” and so on.
He barely has time to see Monty forging a trail toward the punch before he finds himself set upon by young women. They are not asking him to dance, precisely; but they are asking through fluttering small talk if he will ask them. His aunt and uncle taught him to be polite, and so he complies.
“I would be delighted, sir,” says the young auburn-haired lady he extends a hand to, and he finds himself standing across the line from her as the fiddle begins to scrape.
He acquits himself tolerably for the next hour; at first he thinks the women must want to dance with him out of curiosity, but the violent blush of one of his partners as he leads her through the allemande brings him to revise his opinion. This is an uncomfortable idea. Percy has never been handsome; never thought of himself as handsome. He is not sure he wants women to have expectations of him, the way they often do of good-looking men. It is a very mean-spirited thing, but he wishes there were not so many girls here; no one would look askance then if gentlemen made up the difference. It would be harmless fun for two boys his and Monty’s age to dance together.
After several sets Percy frees himself, a little out of breath, and helps himself to a glass of syllabub. A nearby pack of elderly men are eyeing him and muttering, and he has lost Monty somewhere in the crush, so he beats a retreat toward an open door at the back of the room. The host’s town-house is large, and there will be quiet corners into which the guests can disappear.
In the adjacent room is a flock of rakish young people playing backgammon and betting heavily– hopefully he scans the room, but the sight of my lord Disley squandering his fortune at the table is not forthcoming. He passes on.
A small parlor is occupied by a man and a woman making very free with one another; behind a hall door three men are crowded round a flint, lighting one another’s pipes; at last, past a right turn and through a small closet, Percy finds a mercifully empty study, and steals inside.
The music is still faintly audible, but it is distant and muted, as if from underwater. Shelves of books line the walls, which are papered in soft, cool green. The feel of ribbed, embossed spines under his fingers is a familiar one, and he abandons any thought of returning to the party. Lord Montague will be pleased to hear no report of him from any of his acquaintance– he is too well-bred to say it outright, but he hates to be connected publicly with Percy– and Monty, as always, can find other amusement. It is his prime skill.
Percy flips through an illustrated book of natural philosophy, and is just beginning to crack the pages of a new Voltaire when a slight, well-dressed man stumbles into the room and drops into a chair. For a startled moment he thinks it is Monty– he is halfway across the room before the man lifts his hand from his face, revealing himself to have several years on Monty and quite the wrong nose.
“Are you well?” Percy asks anyway, because the man cannot help being himself and not Henry Montague.
“I– oh yes, perfectly!” he says in a voice like a silver bell– bright but thin. “I came over very faint all of a sudden, but I shall be better directly. The heat, no doubt. I hate to be so bold, sir, but I regret to say I have lost my handkerchief– if you–?”
Percy finishes his trailing sentence for him by offering his own handkerchief. The man takes it and holds it over his forehead for several long moments. For all his pleasantries, he really looks ill– his china-doll face is almost gray, and he clenches the kerchief as if to keep his hand from trembling. Looking at him carries with it the odd sensation of staring into a mirror.
The decision is easy to make. Percy does not crowd him; he does not demand to know what is the matter; he does not make small talk and pretend nothing is wrong. Instead he sits in the adjacent chair and reads in silence, no pushing or prodding, and waits, as he wishes sometimes that someone would do for him.
After some time, he glances over the top of his book. The man is about Monty’s size, but much fairer; his eyebrows and lashes are approaching blonde. His features are a little softer, too, but when he looks up and catches Percy’s eye he has a sharp, foxy look of calculation about him that Monty’s face would not bear well.
“I do not believe we have met,” he says with gentle grace.
Percy grimaces, ashamed to be caught staring. “Mr. Percy Newton, sir,” he offers. He is always careful to include the Mr.
“Lord Hervey; your most obedient, Mr. Newton.” Lord Hervey somehow manages to bow whilst seated. “May I take it you was hiding too, before I so rudely interrupted you?”
The only response Percy has to give is a rueful look, which meets with a smile.
“Quite right to do so, too,” Hervey continues. “It is very flat in the way of entertainment; nothing to do but drink punch and bad-mouth one’s acquaintance. At the Opera, if the music is bad, one can at least watch the pit toughs and gallants bloodying each other’s noses for the favor of the actresses. Are you for Faustina or Cuzzoni, by the by?”
Percy is baffled by this turn in the conversation, and it must show on his face, for Hervey clicks his tongue.
“I take you are just come to London?”
“I– I am much in the country, yes,” he admits, feeling for the first time in his life like a bumpkin.
“You need not confess it like a crime! It makes one sick to live in London air all the time– it does me, often enough. Madame Faustina and Madame Cuzzoni are sopranos in Mr. Handel’s company. Their supporters are forever at each other’s throats– there has been more than one riot!– and I am sad to say it has recently got political. The Prince of Wales supports Faustina, you see, and His Majesty is for Cuzzoni, and like any Hanoverian pere and fils they hate each other bitterly– so! To applaud Faustina is to applaud the Prince and scorn the King.”
Against his will, he is fascinated. “But what if one were to prefer Cuzzoni, and still like the Prince better?”
“It is a very astute young man,” Hervey says. “One would keep that to oneself– else what would everyone think?” He seems a little recovered; the color has come back into his cheeks, and he makes a graceful ironic gesture with his hands. He has good hands: pale and well-formed, with delicate fingers.
“I’ve no notion how any of you live like this,” Percy tells him with a half-laugh. “Do you not strangle on your own intrigues?”
“Not to the point of death, generally. But a little secrecy can be good for a man, especially one with my particular constitution.”
That sets his heart a little a-flutter. He is not so unworldly as not to see something familiar in Hervey, or understand a veiled reference such as that. He is warmly flattered, and just now cannot summon the sense to ignore it. No one has ever asked after his political opinions so, or made pointed hints at him, as though he was a man grown with thoughts and feelings worth having.
“You seem a very… philosophical sort of man,” he tries, because he has read a great many Greek books, and he thinks it likely Hervey has too.
That earns him another sharp look. “I have been told so.”
“Are you much acquainted with the ancient world, then?”
“I am a member of the Society of Dilettanti, but we spend more time acquainting ourselves with the bottle than with antiquity. I fancy you wasn’t asking after my library, though.”
“No,” Percy says, more boldly than he feels, “I wasn’t.”
For a moment they hold each other’s stare, sizing one another up across the few feet of space between their chairs. This is the closest Percy has ever been to– to anything , and he feels almost mad with the possibility of it.
Then Hervey gives him another of his soft smiles. “You really do not run in court circles,” he says, “or you would have known that I have been quite head-over-heels for Ste Fox for the past several years. His brother Henry can be intolerably witty upon the subject. I would not bear it– I have a reputation as an unretrievable profligate, and I hate to mar it– but for Ste’s sake I put up with a little raillery. For his sake too I confine myself to him and my wife– he is the gentlest gentleman I ever met, and it would quite break his heart to be so used. Really, Mr. Newton, I recommend you not to fall in love. It is horribly embarrassing to be turned into a sap against one’s will.”
“Oh,” says Percy, hot with mortification.
“But here I am speechifying at you!” Hervey nods at his book. “I see you are a philosophe yourself.”
“I think that’s clear by now,” Percy agrees, with a laugh that comes more from distress than amusement.
“Tell me, though– you have someone better to be philosophical at than poor old me, I suspect. A fellow scholar? A young dash you met at school? Is there any hope?”
Percy gapes at him.
“Oh, come, it was clear enough. You look at me as if you were measuring me against another man’s portrait.”
“My best friend,” he manages, “and after this year I shall never see him again.”
Enough real pain bleeds into his voice that Hervey looks taken aback.
“It’s for the best, I am sure,” Percy continues, with more bitterness than he likes. “He’s a hopeless case– likes a whore and a drink better than his studies, and more likely to send himself to the Devil than work a day in his life. His father wishes he was never born; he as good as told me so, in front of his own son. My friend– he’s no time for a bastard orphan with the falling sickness, and he’ll realize it once I have gone. He can take up with another man or woman, or kill himself with gin. Either would suit him better. No doubt I’ll be better off in an asylum than holding his head above water.”
He shuts his mouth. A brief, shocked silence follows.
Hervey breaks it, like shattering ice with a silver mallet. “How long have you been keeping that down?”
Percy’s eyes are stinging. “Longer than I ought.”
“I should say so,” he agrees. “But who on earth is packing you off to an asylum? I have the epilepsy myself– runs in the family. If I keep myself carefully, I have always been able to stay clear of danger.”
“I– really?”
“I feared I was about to have a fit when I stormed in upon you– lucky this time, I suppose. One never really knows, does one?”
Hervey is very cool about the thing that has always filled Percy with sick terror; but then, he has had more years to accustom himself to the episodes, and perhaps fewer doctors telling him he is possessed by demons.
“No,” he agrees, “one doesn’t.”
Hervey reaches out and touches his arm. “Keep yourself out of that place, d’ye hear? I conjecture anyone not already mad when he went in would certainly be so when he got out.”
“My relatives are set upon it.”
Hervey reaches into his pocket and draws out a small item made of white metal; at first Percy thinks it a watch, but then he opens the lid to reveal a compass, the cardinal directions writ upon it in elegant blue letters.
“Come by the Dilettanti sometime,” he says, watching the needle spin. “We have a positive hoard of clever men and old curiosities; you might find some help there, or at least a little diversion.”
Percy, not sure what this has to do with his being sent to a madhouse in Holland, is prepared to agree when the door opens again, and, just like a farce, in spills Henry Montague, Jr., followed closely by Sr.
“What do you mean,” Lord Montague demands in a low, vicious tone, “by acting this way in front of good society? My son does not talk back to my acquaintance– he does not gamble away the money I allow him– he does not associate with men who are so lost to decency that no gentleman would allow his daughter to speak to them.” Monty has backed against a bookcase; he still forces a smile that is at sharp odds with the naked fear in his eyes. “By God, Henry, if I were not a lenient father–”
It is at this moment that he notices the room is not abandoned. He blinks; steps away from Monty; straightens his coat with a tug.
“Mr. Newton,” he says with all his formal grandeur. “And–” his eyes flick to Hervey in his shimmering ice-blue satin– “I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
Monty is frozen behind him, hands twisted together. Percy wants to go to him, demand what his father has done, but Lord Montague is waiting, and if he does not make the introductions properly there is a very real danger of causing him offense. He has seen flashes of Lord Montague’s temper; Percy is saved from it by the protection of his aunt and uncle, but a son is a man’s own property.
“Lord Hervey, the Earl of Montague,” he says. “Lord Montague, this is Lord Hervey. I have met him just this evening.”
Lord Montague clearly knows the name, for his lip curls. Hervey, to all appearances oblivious, makes him a flawless bow, forcing him to return it.
“Delighted, Lord Montague,” he says, his bell-chime voice in full force. “How odd, sir, that we never met; you must be a visitor to Town, or I am sure I would have had the pleasure of meeting you earlier.”
“I am. I much prefer my estate in the country.”
“How noble! My family home is the dearest place in the world to me… but Montague? Why, then you live not too far from a Mr. Stephen Fox, a very good gentleman of my acquaintance. He always declares London is no fit place for a man– injurious to the morals, and ruinous to the health.”
He speaks as though he stands on a stage; Percy finds he prefers the private Hervey’s wry humor and concern to this brittle, glittering performance. Lord Montague, however, seems to be warming to him.
“Mr. Fox sounds a very respectable man,” he allows. “I quite agree with him.”
Monty is slinking off into the shadow of a green curtain. Lord Hervey follows Percy’s glance toward him, and then deliberately turns back to Lord Montague. In his hand he still holds the compass; Percy swears he sees its lazily turning needle suddenly swerve and point toward the door like a hunting dog.
“If it be not too forward,” Hervey continues, “I would be most happy to introduce you to some friends of mine; not the usual crowds of flim-flam courtiers, I assure you, only some good country gentlemen of your own station.” He offers a confiding smile that, rather like a shallow pool, might reflect anything cast onto it.
“I– would be gratified,” says Lord Montague, with the air of a man rather surprised at himself.
“Marvellous!” Hervey makes as if to take his arm, and then stops, neatly diverting the motion to fold his own hands behind his back. He catches Percy’s eye over his shoulder, gives him one last, knowing nod. With his smooth dancer’s step he leads the way out of the study, already starting upon a new subject.
Percy is across the room in three strides.
“Why, Percy darling, I’m quite alright,” Monty insists, batting his hands away. “You know as well as I do Father and I fight every day of the week excepting Sunday– I would be game, but he’s so damned religious he feels he must rest on the seventh day.” His voice is growing progressively shakier.
“He didn’t–” His hands skim Monty’s shoulders before he can pull them back.
“No– you and your new friend put an end to that. ‘Twould be gauche to strike one’s son in front of company. Who was that mincing little fellow, by the by?”
He is babbling, as he always does in defiance of his own panic. It is odd– Percy is perfectly aware that Monty is short, and never neglects an opportunity to remind him of it, but he very rarely thinks of him as small. He is always so effusive, flinging his hat onto a table and his arms over his friends, crackling with so much nervous, irrepressible energy, that to see him curled in on himself in a dark corner strikes a chill into Percy.
“Lord Hervey,” he says, making a second introduction for a man no longer present. “He’s some– some part of the court, I think.”
“What, Handsome Hervey?” Monty says at once. “Lord, Percy, why did you not send him straight to me? Everyone says he’s the most infamous sodomite. Is he quite pretty? I hear so. Alexander Pope wrote the nastiest poem about him– Now Master up, now Miss– ha, I wonder what he would make of me! What said he to you?”
“Not much.” Percy can feel the conversation sizzling on his tongue; but how can he relate a word of it? The acid taste of the things he said still lingers. “We talked of books.”
“ Books? ” He sees Monty rallying, the prospect of teasing him too strong to resist. This is good– anything to lift his spirits.
“Books,” he repeats innocently.
Monty lifts himself up, jabs a finger upward toward Percy’s face. “I declare I shall never understand you, really I shan’t. What, you sat all the time with this man and your only subject was Plato?”
If only, Percy thinks with a tinge of hysteria. Outwardly, he shrugs.
“Fie! You have so many brains I sometimes doubt you get much use of ‘em.”
A slice of candlelight from the open door catches him across the face, and for a brief moment he is shocked by a vision of Monty as a grown man: elegant as ever, but nothing of frailness about him now, glinting with charm, self-assurance, and wit. His facade of bravado, so easily fractured as a boy, shows no cracks. His father is dead these many years, and he is an earl in his own right, a dashing, talkative, talked-of town rake. Everything about him, every rough patch and speck of grit, has been shined to a high polish.
It could be so, Percy tells himself. Lord Hervey is still coughing delicately in the corner of his mind; there is a place in this world for men like Monty, if they will but carve it out. If he will only survive, only clench his teeth and hang on by his fingernails and hide his bruises, one day he may become that shining, unbreakable new Lord Montague and never feel fear again. It is the best future he can hope for.
But now Monty is talking– his own Monty, reckless, exasperating, and painfully young.
“You do look worn– shall we go? I can surely persuade someone to drive us back to the house, and we can be quite comfortable there by ourselves.”
Percy smiles at him. “Yes. I’d like that.”
They depart arm in arm. By next year, they may be separated for good, but they have a few months more. Percy will take his joy where he can; what more can he do?