“I understood that your lordship wished for ease of movement,” Collins said in the tones of a man who believed ease of movement an unworthy goal for the son of a duke. “Nankeen would be the obvious choice, but I inferred that your lordship desired some protection in the event of . . . falls.” The last word came out on a frigid whisper.
All the your lordships and the pained tones gave Percy to understand that he would be giving Collins several afternoons out in the near future. “You are a genius and a saint, Collins,” he said, already stripping out of his buckskins. “A credit to your profession and Englishmen in general.”
It took some doing to squeeze into the leather breeches. They were soft enough to move in. They were also scandalously tight. Percy was delighted with them.
The boots, too, fit precisely. He laced one as Collins did up the other, then regarded his reflection in the cheval glass.
Aside from the white of his shirtsleeves, he wore black leather from the top button of his jerkin to the tips of his toes. His hair was tied tightly into a queue, as he typically wore it while fencing. On an impulse, he untied the leather cord and let his hair fall in a curtain around his shoulders, half concealing the false scar Collins had once again affixed to his cheek.
The black leather made a sharp contrast with his pale skin, pale hair, and pale linen shirt. His hair would be in his eyes while he fought, which was annoying, but—he turned quickly on his heel and watched in the mirror as his hair whipped around him. Yes, that was good. After all, the purpose of this was to entertain the crowd. Swordsmanship had to come second to showmanship today. This would have bothered him not so long ago, but he found that having thrown out a good number of his principles and reorganized the remaining ones, it was getting easier and easier to make room for new ideas.
“Oi, if it isn’t the Baron,” said Brannigan when Percy arrived, joining the other men beside the scaffold. “Didn’t think we’d see you again. We thought you were scared off after Meredith sliced you up last time.”
“If by sliced up, you mean received a two-inch paper cut, then I’ll gladly let all you gentlemen slice me up so long as you give me half the fight Meredith did,” Percy said, taking his swords from their cases and checking each blade.
“Meredith,” Brannigan called, “I think the Baron paid you a compliment.”
“He can go fuck himself, whoever he is,” called the man who must have been Meredith.
Percy raised his hand in a salute.
“Oh, Christ, it’s you again,” said Clancy. “Can you make sure each fight lasts more than two seconds this time?”
This time, Percy didn’t enter until the third fight, and he did make it last, even though it went against every instinct he possessed. When he was perfectly poised to knock his opponent to the ground, he instead twirled away and made it look like he had managed a narrow and dashing escape. He heard the crowd gasp. He let his opponent get his blade within inches of Percy’s sword arm and then ducked and rolled in the way Kit had shown him. His Florentine fencing master would have wept from the inefficiency of it all, but the crowd fell silent, and that was more important, because at that moment Percy was more worried about rotten vegetables than he was his opponent’s swordsmanship. He carried on like that for fifteen minutes before disarming his opponent.
Before the next match, Clancy returned to the scaffold. “Blood,” he shouted in Percy’s ear, making himself heard over the din of the crowd. “They’re going to want blood. No more of this disarming shite.”
If he had to, Percy would cut an opponent; he was used to fighting with practice swords that had blunted tips, but he supposed he could scratch his opponent’s arm in such a way as to spill a satisfying quantity of blood without causing the man any serious harm. He really, really did not want to do so, however. He had, he supposed, the usual qualms about harming his fellow man. But, more importantly, he did not want to risk a fainting spell in the middle of a sword fight. That was not at all the effect he was aiming for.
Next, he was paired against a man who called himself Friedrich and spoke with a heavy Continental accent. For this match, they were to use sabers, according to some method or whim of Clancy’s. The most Percy could say about the saber was that he enjoyed the sound the curved blade made when it sliced through the air. In every other capacity it was inferior to the smallsword and even the clumsy rapier.
The crowd oohed and aahed when Percy’s opponent demonstrated the sharpness of his blade by slicing through a piece of canvas. Percy rolled his eyes.
While they fought, Friedrich muttered under his breath in what Percy assumed was German. He was very good, possibly as good as Percy, but Percy could tell he was used to fighting with a lighter weapon, because he quickly began to pant.
To give the man time to catch his breath, and to give the audience their money’s worth, Percy began leading his opponent around the scaffold, dancing backward and not attempting any kind of offense. Percy ducked under the other man’s arm, tumbled out of reach, and spun with a flourish of his sword.
Eventually, when he was beginning to worry about exhausting himself, he disarmed the man. Instead of simply taking hold of the hilt, he tossed it high in the air. As he watched the weapon turn over, he hoped that from the audience’s perspective it looked like the weapon had been thrown when Friedrich let go.
Percy caught the saber by its hilt, held both weapons out to the side, and bowed first to Friedrich, and then to the audience.
Friedrich said something that Percy strongly suspected was German profanity when Percy handed him back his sword.
“No blood,” Percy said to Clancy, who was not paying him any attention, because he was busy collecting coins while his assistant took bets.
Next were backswords, then an appallingly clunky broadsword, which Percy had to borrow from another fighter, as he did not possess one of his own. Then came a rather amusing fight against Brannigan with a smallsword in one hand and a dagger in the other. The last fight was once again smallswords, and Percy made sure it lasted a full half hour before he threw the sword in the air and caught it with a flourish.
When Percy was presented with the purse at the end of the afternoon, he figured he needed to buy some goodwill with these fellows if he wanted to fight them again. “I see a tavern on the corner,” he said as loudly as he could. “I’ll stand you all a pint and a supper as thanks for the most entertainment I’ve had in months.”
His first thought had been to figure out some way to fairly split the purse among the lot of them, but he thought that would come across as too high-handed, and—for reasons he could not quite articulate—he wanted these men to like him. It had, after all, been a long time since he had enjoyed anything that could be called an evening out with friends. All the swordsmen except the German, and including Clancy, who Percy definitely had not invited, joined him at the tavern.
Percy spent half his winnings on ale and beefsteak that night. The rest would go to Collins. In the future, he’d need to save that money. The idea of saving money that he had earned, even such a small sum as this, felt better than clandestinely selling jewels and snuffboxes.
He felt like he had accomplished something. And he realized that this might have been the first time he had ever felt anything of the sort.
Chapter 31
“You need to come now,” Betty said, barging into the shop on her day off.
“You may have noticed that I keep a coffeehouse,” Kit said. “I can’t just—”
“I’ll take over. Do you know the scaffold where they sometimes have prizefights? You need to go there. Now.”
“I don’t suppose there’d be any use to asking you why,” he sighed, already grabbing his walking stick and stepping out from behind the counter.
“Go,” she said, all but shoving him out the door.
Kit’s leg was in an especially recalcitrant mood, so he was in a sorry state by the time he reached the corner of Covent Garden that Betty had specified. The square was crowded, peopl
e standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a timber stage. At first Kit thought he was watching a play or some kind of exhibition, and it took a long moment of confusion to understand that the people who were dancing about the stage were swordsmen. One was large, with cropped hair, and the other was thin, with blond hair that hung to his shoulders.
Despite the size of the crowd, the only sounds were the clatter of blades and the clinking of coins, punctuated by occasional crowd-wide gasps as one or the other of the combatants nearly got his throat cut.
“Move,” Kit said, shouldering his way forward through the crowd.
“Hey!” said a man who quite understandably did not enjoy being shoved aside. Kit did not care.
The world was filled with men who had hair that precise shade of gold, surely. There was no reason to think that this was Percy with an enormous fucking weapon being thrust at his idiotic neck.
Kit still wasn’t near enough to see their faces, but he could see the way the fighters moved. And he knew the way that blond man thrust and parried, because he did almost the same damn thing with his fist. Kit knew the way that man favored his left arm, knew that senseless little half step he did with his back foot. Kit was going to fucking murder him.
He was close enough to see their profiles now, and that was either Percy or his identical goddamn twin. The fighters circled one another, and Kit gasped aloud like a half-wit when he saw that Percy’s cheek was split with a red gash. He had to firmly tell himself not to storm the stage, and then realized that the gash he was seeing was a scar. He had seen Percy in broad daylight only yesterday: the scar was false, Percy was uninjured, and Kit was a prize idiot.
Kit wasn’t even sure he breathed for the rest of the fight, or the next one, or the one after that. When Percy was awarded the purse and the crowd finally dispersed, Kit resisted the urge to approach. Instead, he hung back, then followed Percy and apparently all the other swordsmen to a nearby tavern, where Percy spent a fortune feeding and toasting his fellow combatants.
Kit paid for a pint and settled into a shadowy corner where he could watch Percy undetected. From the way Percy hung back, Kit could tell he wasn’t quite comfortable, but he didn’t think he’d have noticed if he didn’t know how Percy acted when he was at his ease—loose limbed and overly talkative. This was how Percy had been that first time or two he sat at the long table at Kit’s—a shade too quiet, as if trying to learn the rules that governed his new companions. Kit would have bet anything that the next time Percy broke bread with these swordsmen, he’d be at ease.
Percy, who had been leaning against a wall, approached the table where most of his comrades had gathered. Kit, who had not properly appreciated Percy’s attire during the fight, as he was distracted by such matters as the sharpened blades coming within inches of Percy’s vital organs, got a good view of the very close-fitting leather breeches that Percy wore.
The leather waistcoat with all its little metal buttons had been bad enough. The breeches were an atrocity. Kit wanted to throw a cloak over the man. Surely, the law was being broken. Where were magistrates when you actually wanted them? He could make out the perfect, indecent curve of Percy’s arse, which had been quite distracting in worn buckskins and poncey silk but was heart-stopping in black leather.
As he watched, the redheaded fighter tried to touch Percy’s cheek.
“Leave it be, you oaf,” Percy said.
“Take it off,” the redhead urged. “Show your pretty face.”
“No, damn you, it’s a disguise. I do not need my people finding out I’ve been consorting with the likes of you ruffians.”
Kit clenched his teeth in jealousy. He did not like watching Percy insult anyone who wasn’t him, which was probably a mad thought, but if insults and flirtation weren’t synonymous for Percy, then Kit was very much at sea.
“Your people!” the redhead laughed.
“Yes, my people. I did not emerge from the sea, sword in hand.”
That was as much as Kit could take. He rose from his seat and sidled around the edge of the room until he was within reach of Percy’s table.
He dropped a heavy hand onto Percy’s shoulder, then watched in satisfaction as Percy turned his head and realized who he was looking at.
“Out,” Kit said.
“No,” Percy responded coolly. “Join us, Mr. Webb. We are dining like kings.”
“Out,” Kit repeated.
Percy looked at him, vastly unimpressed. “Alas, gentlemen,” he told his companions, “but I’m being summoned.”
“This your people, Baron?” asked one of the men.
“Good heavens, no. God forbid,” Percy answered. “I’ll settle with the barman,” he told the table at large, then got to his feet and turned in the direction of the bar without acknowledging Kit. He continued to ignore Kit while he dropped an eye-watering amount of money on the bar, while he walked out the door into the dusky early evening, and while he continued across the square.
“What in hell did you think you were doing?” Kit growled, barely keeping up.
“Eating and—”
“The swords, Percy. I’m talking about the fact that apparently you like to risk your bloody neck in front of a crowd.”
“Yes, well, evidently I do,” Percy said, coming to a stop and reeling on Kit. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Do I— Yes, I damned well do have a problem with that.” Kit was almost inarticulate with helpless rage. He kept remembering the sword slicing through the air, inches away from Percy’s throat. He had the insane urge to pull back the man’s collar and check for wounds. “This is how you got hurt the other day! You let some blackguard—”
“Kindly lower your voice,” Percy said, taking hold of Kit’s sleeve and pulling him into a lane. Kit was put in mind of the last time they had been in a dark, secluded lane, when Kit had punched Percy. At the time, he had noticed that Percy seemed to know how to duck to avoid a hit, and now he bloody well knew why. He also knew why Percy seemed to know how to fight, even when he had hardly been able to make a proper fist.
“You don’t think that your talent with swords might have been useful information for me to have before I taught you to fight?”
“Why, Kit, you think I’m talented,” Percy said, regarding Kit through his lashes. “Thanks ever so.”
“You know bloody well how good you are, so save your breath. Why did I teach you to fistfight when you can use a knife and sword as well as any man I’ve ever seen? We could have had this robbery over and done with.”
Kit hadn’t realized how close they were standing until Percy drew back. “I do apologize for wasting your time, Kit. It had occurred to me that you might have been enjoying yourself, but now I see how silly I’ve been.”
“Don’t be like that. Come now.”
“Don’t be like what, exactly, Kit?” Percy asked, his eyes glittering with anger. “Annoyed that you’re being impossible? You never asked me if I knew how to fight with a sword. You may have noticed that every gentleman in this town wears a sword on his belt, but it didn’t occur to you that some of us know how to use them? You never asked me,” he repeated, “so how was I to know it was relevant? You just threw me in front of Betty and told me to hit her. I’ve never witnessed a highway robbery. I don’t know what they involve in terms of weaponry. That is why I came to you, if you recall. It was your bright idea to teach me to do it, so you can hardly blame me for not being able to read your stupid, stubborn mind.”
Kit was stunned by this volley of words. He wanted to defend himself by pointing out that any idiot could have understood that fighting of any variety would come in useful during a robbery, but he remembered how tentative and awkward Percy had been during their first lessons. He had been almost silent, for God’s sake. Kit remembered how willingly Percy had let Kit take his hands and make them into fists. He had put himself entirely in Kit’s hands, assuming himself to be an absolute novice.
“I apologize,” Kit said. “You’re right.”
“I—I beg your pardon?” Percy looked flustered. Color seemed to be creeping up his cheeks, barely visible in the half dark.
“I made too many assumptions. Do you have any other hidden talents? Knife throwing? Archery? I don’t know—juggling, perhaps?”
“Now you’re mocking me.”
“I’m not,” Kit said. “I’m really not. You looked—Christ—amazing up there, you know.”
“I’m well aware,” Percy sniffed, sounding slightly mollified. “I generally do.”
“That’s a fact.” Kit moved in a little closer.
“I was making new friends and you dragged me away,” Percy said, glaring anew at Kit. But there wasn’t any real heat in it. Percy wanted something from Kit, and whatever it was, Kit wanted to give it.
“That was wrong of me.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Is that so?” Kit moved closer still, until they were chest to chest. He put a hand lightly on Percy’s waist, feeling like he was trying to coax a stray cat closer.
“And last night I didn’t get to go to bed with you. Instead, I had to go to a dance and get lectured by a former lover while getting my bollocks frozen off outside. It was highly unpleasant.”
Kit forbore from pointing out that Percy had been the one to leave without a word. Instead, he moved his hand to the small of Percy’s back. “You’d have rather been in my bed?”
“Obviously,” Percy said, sounding just a tiny bit outraged. Outraged, and like he wanted to be pacified.
Kit bent his head to kiss the soft underside of Percy’s jaw. “We can still do that,” he said. This was all so excessively . . . tender, Kit supposed. It shouldn’t be anything of the sort. He had tried to tell himself that they would just be having fun together. But here in a dark and damp alleyway, they had crossed into something different and dangerous.
Chapter 32
Percy watched Kit frown at the door to the coffeehouse.
The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Page 16