“I will not hurt a woman.” Holland clenched his fists, and for a moment Kit thought this might be more than some gentlemanly rubbish about the fairer sex or some such rot. “I was raised—”
“Fuck how you were raised, and fuck your gentlemanly scruples. You can’t do this if you insist on being a gentleman.”
“A gentleman!” Holland repeated, unable to suppress a bitter laugh. “That has nothing to do with it. If somehow you think that gentlemen are unwilling to hurt women, I hardly know what to do with you.”
“I know perfectly well what Talbot men are willing to do with women.”
“That is precisely my—” Holland began, but was interrupted by a shrill whistle, and they both turned to face Betty.
“Enough. The pair of you are quarreling like fishwives. You,” she said to Holland. “I got in my first fistfight when I was eight years old and I only stopped when the boys got too afraid of me to take me on. Don’t come back until you’re ready to treat me as your equal. And you,” she said to Kit. “This was a terrible idea for all the reasons we talked about. You’re not thinking straight, and you’ll never think straight where these people are concerned.”
When Betty left, Kit knew he ought to follow her and give Holland time to get dressed, but if given a choice between Betty’s wrath and Holland’s sulk, he’d take the sulk.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Holland dress himself with shaking hands. It took him three tries to get his waistcoat buttons lined up. When Kit gave him a proper look, he saw that the man’s cheeks were flushed with what Kit suspected was helpless embarrassment. It felt wrong, seeing Holland exposed like this.
Holland opened his mouth but evidently thought better of it, and swept out of the room, leaving Kit alone and feeling unaccountably disappointed.
Chapter 17
Kit had once been a heavy sleeper. It had been the source of much family comedy, with his brothers attempting to cut his hair or steal his pillow while he slept soundly. Later, Jenny had often needed to shake Kit awake in the morning. But by the time Jenny was gone, Kit had become the lightest of sleepers. Anger and fear had robbed him of peaceful sleep, and habit had accustomed him to waking every time Hannah stirred in her cradle. Now his nights passed almost dreamlessly, and when he woke, the covers were seldom disturbed. Sometimes he thought he didn’t sleep so much as shut his eyes.
So it happened that when, in the small hours of the morning, he heard a rapping at his door, he sprang into wakefulness. Only stopping long enough to step into his trousers—he was not going to confront miscreants in a state of total nakedness—and grab his dagger and his walking stick, he was downstairs quick enough that he doubted his neighbors would even complain of the nighttime disturbance.
When he flung open the door, he didn’t know whether to expect a vagrant who had lost his way home or a messenger with bad news about Betty or some other friend. He certainly did not expect Lord Holland, visibly drunk, his coat draped over his arm, his hair loose around his shoulders.
“What in the— Get inside before the neighbors see.”
“I have something to tell you.” Holland’s usually precise tones were slurred. “S’important.”
“You can tell me indoors,” Kit said, taking him by the arm and tugging him into the shop. “And you can tell me while you’re sitting—no, I don’t trust you with stools right now. Sit in this chair.” Once he had made certain Holland was safely in a chair, he built up the banked fire. “Now, what’s so important that you had to wake me up in the middle of the night?”
“It’s about women.”
“Oh, is it?” Kit asked, amused.
“It is,” Holland said with the earnestness of the very drunk. “I don’t want to hurt them and it’s not fair of you to make me.”
The smile dropped from Kit’s face. “You couldn’t hurt Betty if you tried.”
“S’not the point. I don’t want to try. Don’t want to be the sort of man who does try.”
“I see,” Kit said slowly. He turned his back so he could put the kettle on the fire, and so Holland couldn’t see his face.
“There’re not a lot of things I do right, it turns out. I mean, not a lot of things I do that are good. But that’s one of them. And you shouldn’t try to take it from me.”
Kit turned around and saw Holland, one leg crossed over the other, his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin in his hand.
“I see,” Kit said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. He took a jar of ground coffee off a shelf and put a spoonful in the pot. As he worked, he occasionally looked over his shoulder at Holland, partly to make sure he hadn’t fallen off the chair, and partly because his face was open and vulnerable in a way Kit hadn’t yet seen it. “I ought to have guessed.”
“I’m six feet tall and twelve stone,” Holland said. “That’s a lot bigger than most women.”
“That’s true,” Kit said.
“I don’t want to be frightening.”
“I promise that Betty wasn’t frightened of you.”
“That isn’t the point!” Holland said, his voice nearly a shout. “The point is that I know who I am and what I am, and you shouldn’t make me do a thing that I know is wrong.” He closed his eyes and wrapped his hands tightly around the arms of the chair, and Kit guessed that inside Holland’s wine-soaked brain, the room was spinning. “I do know it’s wrong.”
“Of course you do,” Kit said, rummaging through the jars and baskets he kept behind the counter for some solid food he could get into the man. Finally, he turned up a couple of stale biscuits. He spooned some sugar into the coffee cup and put it on a saucer, then placed a couple of biscuits beside it. “Here,” he said, handing saucer and cup to Holland. “Don’t drop it.”
“Never dropped a cup in my life,” Holland said. “Breeding.”
“One of the reasons I asked you to spar with Betty was that I wanted you to understand that in order to rob your father, you’re going to have to do things you don’t like.”
“I already know that. I knew that the first time I came to you. Did you think that soliciting criminals is something I enjoy? I mean, I did enjoy it, you’re very handsome, and there’s—” He broke off, gesturing vaguely at Kit. Kit crossed his arms over his bare chest, desperately wishing he had thought to put on a shirt before coming downstairs. “All very pleasant to look at, bravo, but the reason I had to come to you in the first place was appalling. I don’t want to steal from my father. I don’t want my father to be a villain. I didn’t ask for any of this. And one day when I have time to think, I’m going to be terribly angry about being forced to deal with all this.”
Kit didn’t ask what “all this” consisted of, just as he wasn’t ever going to ask what was in that book. Whatever Holland and his father were up to, Kit didn’t want to know the details. He needed to keep this entire affair at arm’s length in order to keep his promise to Betty and not get caught up in a job that could easily get personal.
“I’ve never seen your hair down,” Kit said, the words leaving his mouth before he could think better of it. “Either it’s pulled back in a queue or it’s hidden by your wig.”
“I threw my wig in the river. At least I think it was the river. I got lost on the way here. And of course you haven’t seen my hair loose. What am I, a barbarian?”
“You’re definitely not a barbarian,” Kit said, not bothering to suppress a smile.
“Don’t ask me to spar with Betty.”
“Drink some of that coffee. The other reason I wanted you to start with Betty is that I’m not sure I can spar with my leg as it is.”
“I could see it threw your balance off,” Holland said, surprising Kit. “In any event, I’d rather get hurt than hurt anyone else.” He primly wiped biscuit crumbs from his mouth with a handkerchief.
“Would you, now.”
“Part of it is strategy,” Holland said. “If a decent man hurts you, he feels in your debt. If a cruel man hurts you, he thinks he’s your
superior, which makes him underestimate you.” He spoke as if reciting a lesson learned by heart.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“You wouldn’t have. You’re honest. Honesty is incompatible with strategy.” Again, his words had the cadence of a schoolroom lesson.
“Honest?” Kit laughed. “Did you forget who I am and what I did?”
“Certainly not. There’s nothing dishonest about taking things that don’t belong to you. You told me so yourself. It may be wrong, and it may be cruel, but it isn’t necessarily dishonest. Someone who sneaks into your house may be dishonest. But you took things in broad daylight while telling people precisely what you were about to do.”
Kit felt there was something fundamentally flawed about this analysis but couldn’t quite figure out what. “Are you sobering up or do you talk like that even when you’re drunk?”
“Oh, I talk like this all the time, can’t help it,” Holland said, gesturing expansively with his coffee cup but somehow not spilling a drop. His gaze dropped to Kit’s bare chest, as it had several times already, not with the exaggerated leer he had deployed on previous occasions, which seemed designed to embarrass Kit more than anything else, but with a sort of interest that seemed accidental and unstudied, and which embarrassed Kit all the more. “I do talk too much, as you’ve pointed out, Mr. Webb.”
“I never said you talk too much,” Kit said, taking another biscuit out of the jar and offering it to Holland. “Just that you do talk a lot.” He watched Holland chew the biscuit, a crumb clinging above his lip where he usually affixed his beauty patch. Kit had to force himself to look away. “Everybody calls me Kit.”
“Is that your way of telling me to do the same? Are we to use given names? How very cozy of us. Then you ought to call me Percy.” He yawned, covering his mouth in a gesture that managed to be graceful despite his drunkenness. “People are so tiresome about names. Mine keeps changing.” He yawned, delicately covering his mouth with his hand. “It’s boring.”
“You’re about to fall asleep. I don’t know how I’m going to get you home.”
“I can walk,” Holland—Percy—said, rising unsteadily to his feet.
“Like hell you can. You’ll walk straight into the Thames.”
“Pfft,” Percy scoffed. He tried to step toward the door but tripped over the leg of his chair. Kit was by his side in a single stride and caught the man before he hit the floor.
“Oops,” Percy said, making a half-hearted effort to right himself but instead leaning on Kit. His forehead rested on Kit’s shoulder. Kit could feel Percy’s ribs under the linen of his shirt, could feel his heartbeat against Kit’s chest.
“Tell me again how you’re going to walk home.” Kit was surprised by how soft his own voice had become, but Percy’s ear was right there, inches from Kit’s mouth, so it was only natural to speak quietly. But still, the gentleness of his tone and the closeness of their bodies did something to make their nearness feel intimate rather than incidental. When Percy mumbled “slowly” into Kit’s shoulder, and Kit could feel his lips move, it sent a shiver through Kit’s body.
“All right,” Kit said briskly, setting Percy back in his chair. “You’ll spend the night here.”
“Oh really,” Percy said with a leer.
Kit snorted. “Can I trust you not to set yourself on fire or wander into the streets?”
“You can’t trust me at all,” Percy said, but he rested his head on the table beside him, cushioned on his folded arms, so Kit thought the odds against him going anywhere were fairly good.
Kit looked at the stairs and sighed. Leaning heavily on his walking stick, he made his way up to his bedroom. He grabbed the pillow and blanket off his own bed, as well as a shirt for himself. He supposed he could have managed to get Percy upstairs and put him into Kit’s bed, but Kit balked at the idea of letting Percy into his bedroom. He didn’t think he could handle knowing what the man looked like in his bed.
When he went downstairs, Percy was fast asleep. Kit laid out the blanket and pillow before the fire, then got an arm around Percy and managed to wake him up enough to lead him to the makeshift bed.
“Enough room for you,” Percy said, his eyes half-shut, lazily patting the blanket next to him.
Kit couldn’t say he wasn’t tempted. It had felt good when he caught Percy. It had been months since he had been that near a person and even longer since he had wanted to be. But of all the people in the world he needed to share a bed with, the Duke of Clare’s son was at the bottom of the list. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t even care whether this man made it home alive, let alone safely. It was bad enough that they were working together at all; Kit couldn’t afford to let any emotions cloud his judgment. Anger and resentment were troublesome; softness and sentiment would be disastrous.
With his foot, Kit shoved Percy so he was resting on his side. Then he lowered himself into a chair, resting his head against the wall behind him. He doubted he’d be able to sleep upstairs with the knowledge that Percy was asleep in the shop, so he might as well stay where he was. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t standing watch in case Percy needed him, but he couldn’t even believe his own lie. The last thing he saw before his eyes drifted closed was pale hair spread on his own pillow, catching the firelight and glowing.
Chapter 18
“Her Grace was most concerned when you disappeared from the drawing room last night,” Collins said when Percy returned to his apartments in the small hours of the morning. Motivated by pure cowardice, Percy had crept out of the coffeehouse before Kit woke. Now he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep off his headache.
“Tell me you didn’t wait up all night,” Percy said, rubbing his eyes.
Collins remained pointedly silent.
“I do apologize,” Percy said. “I ought to have sent word.”
“I took the liberty of mentioning to Her Grace’s maid that you had spoken of your intention to visit an establishment that caters to gentlemen.”
Percy was very tired and knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, but it certainly sounded like Collins was suggesting he had passed a message to Marian’s maid with the understanding that it would mean one thing to the duke and another thing entirely to Marian. Which perhaps meant that he understood that Percy and Marian needed to communicate secretly. And that could simply be because he understood they had been childhood friends and were now effectively under surveillance. But it could also mean that Collins understood that Percy and Marian were conspiring against the duke. Percy could not decide whether Collins was declaring himself an ally or gently hinting at blackmail.
“You’re an angel and a genius,” Percy said lightly. “That’s possibly the only answer that would stop my father from asking questions. I’m forever in your debt. Marian won’t believe that story for a minute, though.”
“Precisely, my lord.”
“Thank you, Collins. Now, I suppose I ought to make myself presentable and show my face at breakfast.” He sighed. “I was hoping for a nap, but that will have to wait until my father’s had a chance to scold me.”
Collins sent him a brief, skeptical look as if to suggest that Percy shouldn’t aspire to anything so grand as presentability, given his current state. But after a bath, headache powder, and the judicious application of Collins’s considerable skills, Percy thought they had achieved sufficiently passable results. When he descended the stairs and found both Marian and his father at the breakfast table, he felt considerably more alive than he had upon his arrival home.
“You’ve been whoring,” the duke said before Percy had pulled out his chair.
“Good morning, Father, Marian,” Percy said, helping himself to kippers and ham. “Yes, I’m afraid I’ve been whoring.”
“Where?”
Percy had not been expecting that question, and could not imagine why his father needed to know the particulars. He could name a handful of brothels but that would only be meeting his father on the ground of his cho
osing. He chose a different tack. “You can’t expect me to admit to the name of the sort of establishment I frequent,” he said. “Wouldn’t do to have any dear friends stuck in the pillory, now, would it?” That made the duke’s cheeks redden, because he simply hated to be reminded that his son fucked men.
“You will not speak that way in front of Her Grace,” the duke said.
“I beg your pardon, Marian,” Percy said graciously. “I suppose I ought to follow my father’s example and confine my breakfast-table conversation to the ordinary sort of whorehouse.”
“Percy,” Marian said, her eyes daggers. She sat pale faced and stiff backed, her plate empty and her hands in her lap, as she did nearly every meal.
Percy supposed that in the normal course of things, it would be wise to ingratiate himself to the duke so as to secure some sort of livelihood or settlement after the truth came out. But Percy didn’t for a minute think that his father would willingly toss so much as a spare coin in his direction, however agreeable Percy tried to make himself. Besides, Percy reasoned that if he suddenly started acting civil to the duke, after twenty-three years of open hostility, it would make the man suspicious. It would make the entire household suspicious, come to that. Everybody knew that the duke and his heir—ha!—didn’t get along; depending on one’s alliance, that was either because the duke was a belligerent and controlling mean-spirited tyrant or because Percy was a lazy sybarite with a taste for unspeakable vice.
Besides, that was the point of acquiring the book—it would be foolish to depend on the duke’s unlikely largesse when they had extortion as an option.
“It’s time for you to find a wife,” the duke said.
For one wild moment, Percy nearly laughed. With some effort, he schooled his features into something like boredom. “I rather thought that the point of this”—he gestured between his father and Marian—“was insurance in the event that I never sired a son.” He could sense Marian bristle at the other end of the table, and he regretted needing to refer to her union with his father in those terms. But he had a part to play. He took an idle sip of tea. “Indeed, I thought it remarkably prudent of you, given my inclinations.”
The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Page 9