I hate waiting; I hate lateness, whether it’s mine or others’; I hate a schedule being altered without forewarning, even when that schedule is only in my own head and there aren’t any following events to affect and also is there something in this tea that is making me bounce my leg so aggressively I feel like I’m rattling the lantern over our heads? Maybe I just have a severe intolerance for uncertainty, like some people have an intolerance for raw nuts or bee stings.
But I nod, like it’s fine, and Monty says, “So long as it was because you were snogging someone pretty in the alley—that’s the only acceptable excuse.”
“Is Percy here?” George asks eagerly, looking around the teahouse like Percy may suddenly step out from behind one of the frilled screens.
“No, he’s keeping house back in England. Dear Lord, I mention snogging and you immediately ask after Percy? You’re not even subtle about it.” Monty gives George a teasing smile, one that, I notice with another stab of envy, is absent of any actual mean-spiritedness. What would it be like to be in on a joke with Monty rather than the subject of it?
George grins in return, helping himself to half the squares of baklava arranged on a plate in the center of the table. He has a chip in his front tooth, like the folded corner of a page. “Have you ever met anyone who isn’t in love with your husband? He’s a goddam saint.”
“He’s not . . .” Monty tucks his bare left hand into his pocket. “Not my husband, George.”
“Maybe not legally.”
“Not—no. Not in any way. Legally or otherwise.”
George’s eyes widen. “You’ve not separated, have you?”
“Of course not,” Monty replies, though he doesn’t sound entirely confident in that assertion.
“Or . . . does he not know?” George inclines his head toward me, like I can’t see him, and I wish I had let Basira throw us in prison just so this discomfort could have been avoided.
“No, no.” Monty picks up his teacup, trying to recover his previous composure, but it’s like watching a man pull on a coat without realizing he’s missed the armholes. “Adrian has given me his blessing to continue living in sin with Percy.”
“So what happened?” George helps himself to the other half of the baklava. “I thought you were going to ask him to marry you.”
“Can we discuss this later?” Monty presses his teacup to his lips and mutters into the rim, “Or maybe never?”
He then takes an aggressive swig of tea just as George says, “Well, if you don’t propose soon, I will.”
Monty chokes, and the conversation stalls for his coughing fit. I’m relieved to not have to sit and listen to them reminisce about people and places they’ve been together without me, Monty probably showing George how to tie his shoes and ruffling his hair and teaching him the sort of things older brothers are supposed to pass down—I can’t think of any at the moment, but that’s most likely because I never had a brother.
I wait until just before Monty seems recovered, then say, “We need to talk business with you.”
George stretches his long legs under the table. He’s tall, even sitting down, enough that I don’t feel quite so overgrown. Though he looks made of far sturdier stuff than I am. The muscled moons of his shoulders round out his linen shirt. He has the Crown and Cleaver mark tattooed on his forearm, and I have a strong suspicion that literally everyone who sports it chose better placement than Monty. “Is this about Felicity?” he asks.
Monty stops dramatically clapping his own chest and looks up. “Do you know what happened to her?”
George shakes his head. “Just that she was banished. I was at sea when it happened, and the court has been tight-lipped about the details of what exactly she did. This new commodore, Monty, I swear—”
“But she’s gone?” Monty interrupts.
George glances down at his hands. His joints are round and nobbled, like a foal’s. “I’m sorry. I should have written, but Sim said she would and—”
“Stop.” Monty reaches out and gives George’s clenched hands a quick squeeze. “It’s all right.”
George nods once, and Monty pinches the bridge of his nose then looks up, composed as a sonata. “Right,” Monty says. George is still staring at the floor. “So. You’ve still got the Eleftheria?”
“For my sins,” George replies.
“Then you can take a private charter.”
George looks up. “Who’s chartering us?”
“We are,” I say.
“But it needs to stay quiet,” Monty adds. “It can’t get back to Basira Khan. For your sake as well.”
“Are you putting my crew in danger?” George asks, and I say, “Yes,” at the same time Monty says, “No!” We look at each other. George calls for more tea.
Monty and I cobble together an abridged version of the events of the last few weeks, and I show George the spyglass. He turns it over as Monty finishes the story by saying, like he had nothing to do with it, “So Adrian’s got it in his mind that finding the shipwreck our mother survived will shed some light on this already well-lit situation.”
“It’s not—” I would have kicked him under the table had it not been so low to the ground. “Have you heard of the Flying Dutchman?” I ask George.
“Of course,” he says. “Every sailor has.”
I shoot Monty a triumphant look, though it wilts quickly in the face of his indifference. “Basira Khan told us the spyglass might have come from there.”
“From the Dutchman?” George asks.
He sounds as skeptical as Monty. “Is there something wrong with that?” I ask.
George shrugs. “No, but it’s a bit like being told you’ll pay coins minted in El Dorado. You’ve pulled something from a story.”
“Do you think she was trying to trick us?” I ask.
“No, I suspect she meant it. Doesn’t mean it’s not a story.” He pushes back his shirtsleeves, which have slipped down to his wrists. The inked symbol of his pirate fleet looks like blue veins under his dark skin. “Khan grew up raiding tombs in Egypt and claims her father died from a pharaoh’s curse. She’s the sort of person who takes superstitions very seriously. I was a deckhand under her banner when I was younger, and she’d flog men for whistling. Bad luck,” he explains when I don’t react. “Couldn’t pass the salt either or she’d break your fingers.”
“That explains why she was so interested in the spyglass,” Monty says.
“Doesn’t mean she’s wrong!” I protest.
“So you’re chartering my ship to chase the Flying Dutchman?” George asks.
“No, we’re chartering you to help us find a ship supposedly sunk a decade ago by the Flying Dutchman.” Monty raises his glass to me in a cheers, and I have a sense he intentionally made that sound as stupid as possible.
But George doesn’t seem put off. He flexes his feet against the matted rug, cracking his toes. “Better than diving wrecks here.”
“Is that what you do for the Crown and Cleaver?” I ask, and George nods. “Do you look for treasure?”