The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1)

by Mackenzi Lee

I press my head backward against the shingles, arching my neck. “At least you’ll never have to run an estate.” I realize what I’ve said as soon as it’s left my mouth, and I fumble. “Wait. No, I’m sorry, that was . . . Damnation. Sorry. That was a horrible thing to say.” “Is managing your father’s estate truly the worst thing that could happen to you?” “Aside from the obvious things like famine and pestilence and losing my looks? Yes.” “So maybe it doesn’t seem like the best thing right now, fine. But someday you’re going to want to settle down, and when you do, you’ll have a home. And income and a title. You won’t want for much.” “That’s not really what troubles me about it.” “So, what is it?” I feel suddenly like an even greater ass than before for all the while I’ve spent moaning to him about my champagne problems while he’s being shipped off to a sanatorium, and yet here he is, lying beside me and pretending our futures are comparable. “Nothing. You’re right, I’m very lucky.” “I didn’t say lucky. I said you won’t want.” When I look over at him, he’s still got his eyes on the sky. We’re the inverse of each other, I realize, Percy desperately wanting to go home and not feeling he can, me wanting to be anywhere else but with nowhere to go. Perhaps he can’t understand it, the way that house will always be haunted for me, even if my father were gone from it. I can’t imagine living in it for the rest of my life, throwing parties in its parlors and filling the cabinets with my...