We part ways with Pascal and the grandmothers the next morning as the sun rises. Their fair has disappeared from the pier, and the first of the boats have already kicked off from their moorings and are drifting up the river, a flock of colored swans riding the current.
Percy, Felicity, and I wander the city, searching for the French partner institution to the Bank of England. It’s hardly morning but the sun is already beginning to cook the stones. The heat rises from them in shimmering waves. Shops have their signs flipped and their fronts open onto the pavement, displays of produce and flowers and tailored clothes spreading out. A sharp gunpowder smell rolls from a blacksmith shop, along with the bell-clang of the hammer. A shoeblack with a stained rag stuffed into his breeches and a ball of sticky polish rolling between his palms wolf-whistles at Felicity from his perch on a coffeehouse stoop. I extend a tasteful finger to him as we pass.
We find the bank on the high street. It’s a classical building with a marbled interior and rows of wooden-barred windows lining the perimeter, a wigged clerk behind each. The sounds of red heels and brass-tipped canes click like dice against the stone.
“If we don’t act soon, they’re going to think we’re scouting the place for a robbery,” Felicity says after we’ve spent a half of an hour in the lobby, doing what can only be termed lurking.
“We could tell them the truth,” Percy suggests.
“Yes, but we’ve only one chance,” she replies, “and the truth is a bit too preposterous to be convincing. Alchemical puzzle boxes and all that.”
I’m hardly listening to them—I’ve spent most of the while we’ve been loitering watching the clerk at the window nearest to the door, and after close scrutiny of his last few interactions, I’m fairly certain he and I have a big thing in common.
When you are a lad who enjoys getting other lads in bed, you have to develop a rather fastidious sense for who plays the same instrument or there’s a chance you’ll find yourself at the business end of a hangman’s knot. And if this fellow and I had met at a bar, I would have already bought him a drink and put his fingers in my mouth. It’s a great risk—I’m not so much jumping to a conclusion as vaulting haphazardly to it—but, somehow, I know.
“Stay here,” I say.
“What are you doing?” Felicity hisses at me as I start across the lobby.
“Helping.” I check myself in one of the mirrors lining the hall, ruffle my hair for good measure, then stride from the atrium and straight up to the man’s window. Not even a man, he’s just a boy—apprenticeship age, even younger than me. He looks up when I approach, and I give him a big eyeful of the dimples that have launched a thousand ships. “Um, bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?”
“Oui,” he replies. “May I help you?”
“I’ve a bit of an unorthodox query.” I let out a shy laugh, flit my eyes down to the floor, then back to him through my lashes. His neck goes a little red. Fan-bloody-tastic. “You see, I’m touring.”
“I assumed.”
“Oh, am I so obvious?”
“Well, the English.”
“Of course.” I laugh again. “The English. God, I’m so awful at French. I can only say about three things. When is supper? Can you help me? and You have lovely eyes—Tes yeux sont magnifiques. Was that right?”
“Very well done. Is the last one to impress all the French girls?”
“Well, I was saying it to you just then. They’re quite something.”
I give him a moment of intense eye contact with my head tipped a little to the side. The corners of his mouth turn up and he shuffles the papers in front of him. “You had a question.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry, you’re . . .” Shy smile. Telling pause. “Distracting.” Now he’s really blushing. Poor, sweet thing, I think as I lean forward on the counter and he looks very directly at my lips. Wait until you fall for the boy who can’t love you back. “So I’m on my tour and . . . Sorry, it’s so queer. On the way down from Paris, we were robbed.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes, it was rather harrowing. We didn’t have much on us, thank God, but they took all the letters of credit my father sent with me. I know this is his bank, but I haven’t got the actual papers.”
He gets ahead of me a moment before I explain it. “You want to make a withdrawal against your father’s name without a letter of credit.”
“I told you it was an unorthodox question.”
“I was expecting much worse.” He cracks a shy smile. “I thought you were going to ask me to dinner.”
“I still might. Though you’d have to pay.” He laughs and I bring the dimples out to play again.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t—”
I know that as soon as the word no makes its appearance, I will have lost irreclaimable ground, so, in what can only be described as a Hannibalistic maneuver, I cut him off at the pass. “I’ll give you my father’s name, and his address in England. He should be in your ledgers, but if there’s a problem, you can write to him and he’ll send funds, I know it. I’m so sorry, but I’m in such a tight spot and I’m a long way from home and it’ll take months before my parents can send any money and I’ve nowhere to go. I hardly even speak French.” I pitch my voice a little, not quite pathetic, but sympathetic, and his whole face melts like butter. I am not good at much, but what I do, I do well. “Sorry, this all sounds strange.”
“No,” he says quickly. “I’m so sorry you’re having a hard time.”
I run my thumb along my bottom lip. “I’ve been standing in the lobby for the last half of an hour trying to get up my courage to come in and ask, I was so afraid I’d be turned down. Honestly, I came to you because you looked the nicest. I mean the kindest. I mean, not that you’re not . . . You’re very nice looking. I promise, I’m not a scoundrel. I just don’t know what else there is to be done. I’ve nothing else left.”
He sucks in his cheeks, then glances down the row of clerks. “Give me your father’s name and address,” he says quietly. “I can’t give you much, but I’ll do what I can.”
I could have kissed him for that. Were we not in distinctly upright society, I would have. He disappears behind the counter, then returns with a small stack of bills. “There was a note with the account,” he says as I sign the receipt, then slides a scrap of paper across the counter to me. At the top is written an address, then below it, in a hasty scrawl:
We have secured lodging at this location and, God willing, you will meet us here.
Beneath is Lockwood’s signature.
As sour as I am on our bear-leader, it’s a relief to know that he survived the highwaymen’s attack. Not only that, but he’s here—we could find him by the afternoon and be back on schedule. Might not even be made to go home, if Felicity’s theory is correct. Instead I’m looking at weeks of rough travel with little money and none of the comforts to which I’m accustomed, and an unknown destination waiting for us at the end of it.
But also maybe something that could keep Percy from an asylum.
The clerk stamps the receipt, then asks, “Is everything all right?”
“Fine.” I fold the note in half and slide it back across the counter. “Could you dispose of that for me, please?” I give him another smile, and when he hands me the bills, I let our fingers overlap on purpose. He looks ready to burst with pleasure.
“How did you do that?” Felicity asks as I rejoin them on the other side of the lobby and show off my spoils.
“Simple,” I reply, and flash her my most roguish smile. “You have your skills and I have mine.”