The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

by Cat Sebastian

  “I came in through the kitchens.”

  “You’ll have given Cook palpitations, thinking brigands were after her shortcrust recipe. Really, though, where were you?”

  “I’d happily spill all my secrets to you, but how long do we have until your maid notices that you’ve gone missing?”

  Marian examined her fingernails. “I put some laudanum in her bedtime chocolate.”

  Percy had been undoing the dozen buttons that fastened the jerkin but stopped and stared at Marian. Poisoning the servants seemed rather uncalled for.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I only gave her enough to make her sleep heavily. And if you’re squeamish about that, I can’t think how you mean to get through a robbery where actual weapons are involved.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been up to, dressed like that?” he asked, gesturing at her breeches, then looking pointedly at the dirt on her hands, the small tear on the shoulder of her shirt. The sole was loose on one of her slippers, and beneath her eyes were circles so dark, they were nearly purple. Whatever she had been doing, it wasn’t simply sneaking around. It was dangerous.

  “No. Are you?” she asked.

  “I’ve been learning how to hold up a carriage.”

  She blinked at him. “I thought you said your highwayman would do the job.”

  Percy had not been looking forward to breaking the news to Marian. “Well, you see. Instead, he’s going to teach me to do it.”

  “That’s a terrible idea. You’ll get killed.”

  “It seems to be our best chance.”

  “What if he recognizes you?”

  “Highwaymen wear masks,” Percy said. “Don’t they? Besides, Father won’t pay any attention to my face. If someone is beneath Father’s notice, he literally does not notice them. He still calls the footman George, even though George died ten years ago. Anyway, don’t worry about me. Think about the book.”

  “I’ve had another letter from the blackmailer.” From inside her shirt, she removed a folded sheet of paper and handed it to him.

  “Already?” he asked. They still had over a month before the payment was due, and Percy needed that time.

  “It’s not a demand for early payment,” Marian said. “Read it for yourself.”

  Percy scanned the letter’s contents. The paper was flimsy and cheap but the writing was bold, each pen stroke a flourish. “‘Dear Madam,’” he read. “‘I hope this missive finds you in good health and the best of spirits. Your present circumstances are of a sort that must be uniquely trying, even without the added hardship of blackmail.’ Good God,” he said to Marian, glancing up, “one knows things are bad when one’s blackmailer sympathizes. ‘Given the nature of our previous correspondence, it is unlikely that you’ll put much faith in what I say, dear lady, but please believe me when I say that I would much prefer never to have come into the knowledge that has formed the basis of our communications. If I am to be frank—and, really, to whom can one be frank if not the person whose fortune and reputation one holds ransom—I would much prefer you give me the five hundred pounds and let me disappear into the night. I assure you it will be my life’s work to keep your secrets. Surely, you will protest that I ought to keep your secret out of the goodness of my heart; the trouble is that my heart isn’t in the least good. I am, to the core, a mercenary creature. Please consider this letter a statement of my good-faith promise to uphold my end of our bargain; while I am a rotten sort of fellow, I am not a dishonest one. I anxiously await your reply by the usual means. Your obedient servant, X.’”

  Percy refolded the paper and handed it to Marian, his eyebrows raised. “The usual means? Exactly how many letters have you exchanged with this blackguard? And is his correspondence always so solicitous?”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “He’s exhausting.”

  “You don’t mean to take this man at his word, do you?” he asked.

  She let out a laugh, harsh and sudden. “No. That I do not.” Then she leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, turned, and climbed out the window.

  Chapter 23

  By the end of the first week of December, both Percy and Flora were appearing nearly every day at the coffeehouse.

  Percy claimed he only came for lessons. But their lessons took place in the late afternoon, and he often arrived in the morning, spending hours making light conversation with other patrons. In the span of a fortnight, he had made himself a regular. He gave his name as Edward Percy, he dressed not in the richly embroidered coats of Lord Holland, nor in the leather jerkin and buckskins of their backroom sparring, but in a brown suit of clothes not unlike Kit’s own.

  He wore his hair unpowdered, and Kit caught himself staring more than he cared to admit. Worse still was Percy’s sixth sense for knowing when he was being watched. He kept catching Kit out, and then Kit would have to either hastily look away or endure Percy’s smug little smile. None of it stopped him from looking again a few minutes later.

  Kit found himself anticipating the moment when Percy would walk through the door. There was always a moment when Percy would scan the room until he found Kit, and then something curious would pass over his face, as if he were as glad to see Kit as Kit was to see him, and also as perplexed by this as Kit was.

  Some days, instead of directly taking a seat, Percy would saunter over to the counter, steal whatever pastries Kit had on offer that day, and strike up a conversation as Kit stoked the fire and stirred the pot. Perhaps conversation was overstating the matter: what he actually did was cast a relentless barrage of insults at Kit. He complained about the temperature of the coffee, the missing third volume of Tom Jones, the inadequate number of currants in the bun he was eating, and various failures of Kit’s grooming.

  “How do you do it?” Percy asked one day.

  “Do what?” Kit grumbled, trying not to look too excited about it.

  “I’ve never seen you clean-shaven, but your beard never progresses beyond a sort of dirty-looking stubble. It ought to be halfway to your knees by now.”

  The truth was that he shaved on Sundays, a day the shop was closed. The truth was also that he used to shave much more often, but then he noticed what happened when he stroked his jaw, rubbing the pads of his fingers over his stubble: Percy’s gaze dropped, his lips parted, and his studied leer became something a little bit raw.

  That was the sum total of their relationship: insults, fistfights, and sometimes, rarely, when they were both too tired to move, a tentative conversation.

  Then, when Percy left, Kit would spread out maps of the roads between London and Cheveril Castle, trying to remember every convenient bend of the road and useful pothole, every inn and innkeeper, planning how and where they would ultimately do this job.

  Flora’s presence was harder to explain. If she hadn’t caught herself a patron after the first few days, then why bother continuing to fish in a stream that hadn’t so far yielded any results? When he asked Scarlett as much, she told him plainly to mind his own business.

  Day after day she sat in the window, sometimes reading her Bible, sometimes embroidering. More than once she showed Percy her handiwork. Kit assumed that Flora was attempting to catch Percy’s eye: he was the son of a duke and a man whose mistress would, presumably, be well compensated. Even though Percy didn’t wear fine clothes or announce himself as Lord Holland, Scarlett knew the truth, and she might certainly have told the girl to go after him. That had to be the case, because otherwise Kit was hard-pressed to explain either Flora’s presence in the shop or her attempts to get Percy to notice her.

  “Are we doing any work today?” Betty asked, walking past him with a stack of empty cups. “Or are we lounging around and staring at customers? Just let me know.”

  He heard the dishes land with a clatter in the scullery sink. “It seems that we’re dashing crockery to pieces,” he called.

  When she emerged, she leaned in close to his shoulders and spoke in a whisper he could hardly make out over the din of
the room. “Are you going to actually teach that lad to hold up his da’s carriage or are you just going to keep rolling around with him on the floor?”

  “You’re full of questions today,” he observed. “What a treat you are to be around.” She was right, though. Percy was perfectly competent with his fists by now and had managed to disarm not only Kit but also the errand boy. It was time to take this project to the next stage.

  The problem was that the next step was complicated. He’d ordinarily go on horseback, but so far he hadn’t gone on more than short, slow rides. Hampstead Heath was five miles away. The alternative was a carriage, but that posed the problem of finding a place to stow the conveyance.

  In the end, Scarlett inadvertently solved the problem by asking him to escort Flora to her aunt’s house in Edgware.

  “Why?” Kit asked her.

  “I can hardly send her on her own,” was Scarlett’s answer.

  “You have your own carriage and your own men. And I need hardly point out that any of your men will be better equipped than I to defend her, should it come to that.” He gestured at his leg, because even though he had held his own against Percy, he was a good deal slower than he’d need to be in a brawl.

  “I trust you,” she said, and he didn’t ask why she suddenly didn’t trust the men she had hired.

  He agreed, of course. He could hardly refuse so direct a request without being churlish about it. Besides, in the past, she had often asked him and Rob for small favors; in Rob’s absence, perhaps it was only natural for Kit to accede.

  “We’re going to Hampstead Heath,” Kit said, dropping the coffee cup onto the table before Percy.

  Percy blinked up at him. “Why?” His eyelashes were darker than his hair, lighter at the tips. Kit could have identified Percy by his eyelashes alone, which was a lowering thought.

  “Because it’s closer than Richmond,” Kit growled, and stomped away.

  Later, after they finished sparring and sat slumped against the wall of the back room, a flask of ale passed between them, Percy turned his head to face Kit. “What will we be doing in Hampstead?”

  “We’re going to hide in a stand of trees and watch the carriages go past so you can learn the best time to attack.” Kit took a mouthful of ale. “The truth is that there isn’t much more we can do here. Your fighting is . . . adequate. It’ll suffice.”

  “Will it, now?” Percy said, amused.

  “Aye,” Kit said gruffly. “You know it will.”

  “Is that a compliment?” Percy’s voice was light, but Kit thought there was a hidden weight to his question.

  “You’re a good fighter. You use your brain and your body.” Kit felt slightly lewd saying body, as if he weren’t supposed to have noticed that Percy had a body at all. Kit wondered what would happen if he admitted that he had been half hard the entire time Percy had sparred with the errand boy the previous week.

  “Huh,” Percy said, faintly surprised and a touch embarrassed, like he didn’t quite believe Kit. Which was ridiculous, because surely Percy, inexperienced as he was, knew he was competent. It was almost as if he wasn’t used to praise.

  “There isn’t much more I can teach you,” Kit admitted.

  “Ah. We won’t be doing this anymore?” Percy asked. For a moment Kit thought he heard a trace of disappointment in the other man’s voice, but that couldn’t be right. The Duke of Clare’s son surely had many more interesting things to do with his time.

  And yet—he had been coming to Kit’s nearly every day, sometimes hours earlier than necessary. And when he finished here, if he was anything like Kit, then he was probably in no condition for anything more trying than a hot bath.

  All of which made Kit wonder when Percy found the time to be Lord Holland. When did he find time for dinners and trips to the theater and whatever else gentlemen did with themselves. There were lords and ladies who had to be wondering where Lord Holland was.

  And all the while, Lord Holland was here, in a dirty and badly lit room, sharing cheap ale with a criminal. Kit turned his head, resting his temple on the cool wall behind him. He was facing Percy now, their noses only a few inches apart. There was no possibility that this man would miss Kit’s company, was there? It was laughable. Risible. Kit should be embarrassed for even thinking of it.

  Percy liked the looks of him and seemed to enjoy trying to make him blush with wry insinuations and a sort of one-sided flirtation that Kit did nothing to discourage. But wanting to ogle somebody—hell, wanting to fuck somebody—wasn’t the same as deliberately spending all one’s time with them.

  They were so close together. Kit could hear every soft exhale from Percy’s lips, could smell his scent of clean sweat, lemony soap, and leather. The hair around his face had come loose from his queue and now curled damply around his temples. Kit badly wanted to tuck it behind his ears.

  It wasn’t only Percy who was choosing to spend all his time with Kit—Kit was ready to drop everything as soon as Percy walked in the door. He caught himself putting aside the buns with the most currants and the cakes with the heaviest dusting of sugar, and then casually putting the dish within reach of Percy’s coffee cup as if by accident. Every day he looked forward to Percy’s arrival with a complicated blend of hope and confusion, which was complicated even further by the fact that when he looked at Percy, he saw Percy’s father’s face.

  He felt like he had betrayed himself, had betrayed his family. He tried to imagine what Jenny would say if she could see him now, if she knew he was wondering what might happen if he leaned forward and ran his tongue along the plump lower lip of the Duke of Clare’s son.

  He thought of all the graves the Duke of Clare had put in the ground, thought of all the love and care and hope he had buried.

  What did it mean that he could forget all that? Or, if not forget it, then shove it out of sight.

  “Well?” Percy said. “Does that mean we’re not going to be doing this anymore?” He gestured around them, as if Kit needed the reminder about what they were doing here. And maybe he did.

  “Yes,” Kit said. “We won’t be doing this anymore.”

  It didn’t matter whether Percy looked disappointed.

  Chapter 24

  Percy sat on the floor of the antechamber of his apartments at Clare House, his swords on the carpet before him, the morning sun glinting off their freshly polished blades. Carefully he wrapped the weapons in soft leather and put them in the bag he had stored them in while traveling around the Continent. He slung the strap of the bag over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of himself in the cheval glass.

  The problem was that he looked too much like himself. He wore the same outfit he had worn to spar with Kit. He didn’t look anything like a gentleman—what gentleman would go about bareheaded, let alone even consider wearing anything so outlandish—but he didn’t want to run the risk of being identified as Lord Holland.

  What he really wanted was a beauty patch. A stupid little mouche, right under his eye, would alter the shape of his face enough. But a patch would be all wrong with all this leather—he was trying to be fearsome, not foppish.

  “Collins,” he said slowly, “what do actors use to create warts and scars?”

  In the mirror, he saw his valet go pale and clutch his chest. He was not taking this turn of events as stoically as Percy might have hoped. “Give me an hour,” he said faintly. “And I’ll see what I can do.”

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, Percy had a scar the length of his hand, reaching from the outside corner of one eye to the edge of his mouth. It was pink and ragged and proclaimed that this was a man who didn’t give a fig about getting maimed. It was perfect.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m off to disgrace myself.”

  It was, he thought as he approached the scaffold in Covent Garden, not the most foolhardy thing he had ever done. That honor went to approaching a highwayman to assist him in committing a capital crime with his own father as victim. It would take a lot to surpass himself. />
  He walked up to the man who looked like he was in charge—or at least the man who was in charge of money, based on the pouch of coins he held closed in his fist.

  “How do I join the fun?” Percy asked, realizing too late that he ought to have disguised his voice, or at least his accent. But the false scar tugged at his mouth and gave his speech a slightly clipped quality, so there was that.

  The man looked him up and down, then regarded the sword Percy wore at his hip and the dagger sheathed beside it.

  “Wait over there,” he said, gesturing with his chin at a group of men Percy gathered were the other combatants. “You can go first.”

  This, Percy knew from having watched no fewer than a dozen of these matches over the past several weeks, meant he was the sacrificial lamb. Newcomers went first and were usually knocked out of competition after only a match or two. The prize, after all, went to the last man left standing, and newcomers were made to work the hardest.

  Percy had been counting on it. He knew he could best whatever badly skilled swordsmen he’d be paired with in the first matches. He knew he could do it, moreover, without even tiring himself. He could use that time to be as showy and theatrical as possible, and to give the crowd time to take out their purses and send for their friends to do the same.

  He was almost certain he could also best the more competent swordsmen he’d go up against in the following matches. Over the past weeks, he had watched them fight, studied their habits, and learned their weaknesses.

  “What’s your name?” asked the man.

  Bugger. Percy hadn’t thought of this. “Edward?” he said, hating that his voice seemed to want to make it into a question.

  The man rolled his eyes. “Edward,” he repeated flatly. “No. You’re . . .” He gazed heavenward, as if looking for inspiration. “The Baron,” he said, apparently satisfied.

  “No, my good man, I’m afraid not,” Percy responded, displeased with the stupid moniker and vaguely annoyed at being demoted to baron.