“No,” Kit said, his gaze horribly soft, as if he knew something of Percy’s thoughts. He reached out as if to touch Percy’s shoulder reassuringly, God help them both, but then pulled back. “Not yet, I mean. He doesn’t know your father is our mark, but he’ll have to know in order to do the job.”
“All right,” Percy said. “You mentioned that you already engaged the other people who I require?” They had discussed a sharpshooter and another man to actually hold the carriage up alongside Percy.
“A girl named Hattie Jenkins will be our sharpshooter. As for the other man, I’ve decided that I’ll do it myself.”
“But you can’t,” Percy said immediately, then regretted it when Kit clenched his jaw. “We both know you wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough, if it came to that.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“You can’t know that.”
“You don’t get to make choices for me,” Kit said, his voice low and dangerous for reasons that Percy did not understand. “I’m not in your pay or your service.”
“Of course you aren’t! This was supposed to be my job,” Percy protested. “When I tried to hire you, you wouldn’t do it! That was the point of our entire arrangement.”
Kit looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he just shook his head. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. Let’s just say that I want to satisfy myself that the job is done right.”
“About that,” Percy cut in. “You’ve never told me what makes you so eager to see my father’s downfall.”
“That makes two of us.”
Well, of course Percy hadn’t. He could hardly go around blabbing about his own illegitimacy. And yet—in a few short days, he and Marian would see that it became common knowledge. The only risk in telling Kit now was that Percy had not yet told another soul about his predicament and did not wish to start. He wanted to take his secret—the one that exposed every facet of his existence as a fiction—and bury it under layers of tissue paper, the way Collins had packed all Percy’s most fragile treasures before taking them off to be sold.
But Kit was looking at him, something hard in his eyes that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. Percy shouldn’t give a fig what was or wasn’t in Kit’s eyes, or in anyone else’s eyes, for that matter.
Every day is market day for secrets, his mother had always said. Secrets could be traded for favors, for countenance, for trust. Secrets could be kept for the same price.
Sometimes one shared a secret so it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. Sometimes one shared a secret to take away a bit of its power. Maybe that was what Percy would be doing if he told Kit about his father.
But secrets could also be shared to show that one trusted the recipient. Here, hold this, I know you won’t break it, his mother had said when handing him a delicate glass bauble. And Percy had remained so still that he had forgotten to breathe.
“My father’s marriage to my mother was invalid,” Percy said, “because he was already married at the time. Someone who knows about this is blackmailing Marian. You see what this means,” Percy said, aware he was rambling and unable to stop, because that would mean looking at Kit’s face. “I’m illegitimate and so is Marian’s daughter. I’m not particularly concerned about myself, beyond the loss of my name, my station, and my fortune, but I can’t forgive my father for doing this to Marian. That’s why I need the book—we’re going to ransom it until my father pays enough for Marian and the baby and me to live on.”
Kit remained utterly still, leaning against the door as he had since entering the room. “Beyond your name, station, and fortune,” he echoed. “Mere trifles.”
“Don’t pretend you care about dukedoms and estates.”
“I don’t,” Kit said promptly. “I do care that you’ve lost things that matter to you.”
“Things you hate.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to pity me.”
“I don’t. I couldn’t.” Kit managed to deliver these last words without any trace of affection, which Percy didn’t think he could see without feeling sick, but with a sneer. Percy didn’t know what that sneer meant, but it put him on familiar ground.
“A friend,” Percy said carefully, “suggested that I ought to regard my father’s first marriage as a youthful peccadillo. And that my quest for revenge is ungenerous of me.”
“The world is filled with people who quietly choose to forget the marriages they made when they were young and didn’t know any better. Sometimes that’s the only way people have a chance at happiness. But your father isn’t some traveling tinker. He had a responsibility.”
“To the estate,” Percy said, nodding.
“Fuck the estate,” Kit said with venom. “No, he had a responsibility to you. He let you believe a lie—a lie about who you are and what your place is. He let you prepare your whole life for a purpose you don’t have.”
“What else could he have done?”
“Other than tell the truth? Well, instead of letting you believe that your worth hinges on your place in a hierarchy that men like him made up centuries ago—a hierarchy that is deranged and infantile and does a great deal of harm, I’ll point out—he could have rebuked all of it. He could have given away his wealth, renounced his title, and lived like the rest of us. He could have lived the sort of life that you’re now meant to live.”
“I don’t think one can renounce a title,” Percy said, because that was the only part of Kit’s speech he could engage with. The rest was not only radical but felt somehow blasphemous, possibly treasonous.
“He should have done it anyway.”
There were moments when the world appeared to remake itself. It had already happened to Percy once this year, when he had learned of his father’s betrayal. And now it was happening again—everything tearing apart at the seams, only to be sewn up in a different shape altogether. The world he now saw was Kit’s, a world where one could refuse to accept the existing order of things, a world where old truths could be jettisoned and new ones put into place.
Percy felt oddly vulnerable, newly hatched in a world where he didn’t know his way. He leaned instinctively toward Kit, not realizing he was doing it until Kit reached out and pulled him close. Percy shut his eyes and rested his forehead against Kit’s.
“Sorry,” Percy said after a few moments, unsure what he was apologizing for but aware that he was taking up Kit’s time.
“Shut up,” Kit said, and kissed him.
Chapter 38
“Stay,” Kit said, speaking the words against Percy’s mouth. He had spent weeks committing to memory every detail of Percy’s various appalling ensembles and now wanted to remove every stitch of this one. The gold braid alone could—and should—be snipped off and sold for enough to put bread in the mouths of all Saint Giles’s urchins for an entire week, and those buttons could pay the rent on a decent set of rooms for a year. But he also wanted to trace the line of that gold braid with his heated fingers, then undo each button with his teeth.
He decided not to inquire too closely into either of these urges.
“I only have an hour,” Percy said, pulling away but leaving his hands on Kit’s hips. “I need to accompany Marian on her visits.”
“She’s important to you,” Kit said looping his arms around Percy’s neck. “Did you hope to marry her?” It was probably a tactless question, considering who she was married to—or not married to—presently, but Kit wanted to know, for reasons he had firmly decided were not jealousy.
Percy furrowed his brow. “I thought it might come to that, although of course I always hoped Marian would make a match with someone who could be a proper husband for her.”
“Do you not ever fancy women?” Kit asked, weighing his words carefully.
“Oh, no. Never even bothered trying to fool myself on that score. I take it you’re, er, more broad-minded in your preferences.”
“Mmm.” Kit was momentarily distracted when Percy began kissing his neck. “But
not broad-minded enough to let you leave that wig on while you’re kissing my neck that way.”
Percy complied without taking his lips from Kit’s neck, tossing the wig onto Kit’s desk. Kit undid Percy’s plait and then ran his fingers through the silky strands with something like relief.
“How much else do you want me to take off?” Percy asked.
“If we only have an hour, not much. It probably takes a full hour to button you into that getup.”
“You’re not wrong.” With that, Percy took a handkerchief from the recesses of his coat and spread it on the ground before dropping to his knees. Kit promptly decided he was very enthusiastic about Percy remaining dressed for this encounter, from the heart-shaped birthmark to the sword at his hip.
Kit reached behind him to slide the bolt shut on the door.
“I’ve been wanting to do this,” Percy said conversationally as he unlaced Kit’s buckskins.
“Ngh,” Kit said articulately, his palms flat against the door behind him. And then, recovering himself, “Be my guest.” He searched for something else to say, but then Percy’s hand was drawing Kit’s erection out and holding it lightly in a loose fist, and Kit’s thoughts deserted him again.
“I didn’t get a chance to get a good look at you the other night,” Percy said, moving his hand so slowly and languidly that Kit wanted to cry. “It was dark, we were rather hurried. But now,” he said, his voice trailing off as he swiped his tongue over the head of Kit’s cock.
Kit was fully hard now, hard and wet and wanting. “Next time we do this with our clothes off.” Surely it wasn’t presumptuous to talk about a next time; they both clearly enjoyed this. Maybe the problem was that Kit was thinking of a string of next times stretching out into the future.
Percy’s only answer was to suck lightly on the tip of Kit’s erection. Kit groaned and let his head fall back against the door. Percy was doing something with his tongue that made Kit want to cry out, want to thrust forward, but Percy’s hands were firm on his hips, keeping him in place.
“Next time,” Kit repeated, hoping Percy couldn’t hear the hopeful pleading in his voice.
Percy drew him deeper then, and Kit watched his length disappear into Percy’s mouth, lovely and obscene and fascinating. Something of that must have shown on his face because Percy gave him a look that somehow managed to be a smirk despite the fact that his mouth was full of Kit’s prick.
Kit didn’t even want to blink, lest he miss a second of this. He wanted to memorize the way Percy’s hair fell over his face, the way the silk thread in his coat caught the light, the way that absurd birthmark was now a mere inch from where his lips stretched around Kit’s erection. Somehow, he looked angelic, with his golden hair and the halo-like glow that came from his clothes, and the fact that he was currently sucking Kit’s cock did nothing to detract from that. Kit took one of his hands off the wall and gingerly brushed a few stands of hair off Percy’s face so as to get a better view.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Kit managed to rasp, and then stopped when he felt the head of his cock nudge the back of Percy’s throat. At that point, all he could do was swear. “Stop,” he finally said, pulling at Percy’s hair to signal his urgency, while gripping the base of his erection with the other hand.
Percy pulled off with an obscene noise and sent Kit a bewildered look. “Everything all right?” he asked, his voice sounding hoarse and wrecked in a way that made Kit shudder.
“Yes,” Kit said emphatically. “I just want it to last. You’re so good. I’ve never felt anything like your mouth. Never had it done like that.”
Percy narrowed his eyes. “How? Competently?”
Kit gave a desperate laugh and ran a thumb over Percy’s cheekbone.
“Will you permit me to resume?” Percy asked with an exaggerated air of forced patience.
Kit murmured his assent and then groaned when Percy swallowed him again.
“Because,” Percy said when he pulled off again, in the same slightly snide tone he had used a moment before, “let me tell you, this isn’t even particularly skillful. I wouldn’t even consider my talents above middling in this arena.” And then he resumed sucking and licking and doing miraculous things with his tongue.
Kit was—there was no other word for it—overcome. He expected his good leg to give out any minute now. Not only was Percy’s mouth hot and wet and wonderful, but it was mocking and impatient and a little mean. It wasn’t that Kit liked Percy being mean—well, no, he definitely did like it, which was something he would think about some other time—but it was who Percy was. The person giving Kit this pleasure was the same man who held a sword like an extension of his arm and told him secrets like they were blood oaths. It made Kit feel unspeakably fond.
“I adore you,” Kit said, and the worst part of it was that he had paused a full second before speaking to weigh his words as well as his lust-addled mind was able, so he couldn’t even blame his frankness on the sort of whim that struck a man right before coming. “I adore you,” he repeated for good measure.
Percy glanced up at him, openly skeptical and maybe a little pitying, but his only answer was to take one of Kit’s hands and bring it to the back of his head, and to remove his own hands from Kit’s hips.
Kit opened his mouth to ask whether Percy was sure, but Percy must have anticipated this because he was preemptively glaring up at Kit. Kit tilted his hips forward, his palm cradling the back of Percy’s head. Percy put up one knee and braced a hand on the door behind Kit. Kit heard himself make an unhinged, desperate sound.
After that it was just pleasure and sensation, tempered by the hope that he wasn’t hurting Percy and the vague sense that Percy would be very cross indeed if Kit expressed this concern aloud. Kit gasped out a warning and came with his eyes squeezed shut and his hands fisted in Percy’s hair.
Percy kept at it, slowing his mouth, moving almost tenderly, until Kit could take no more and attempted to haul Percy up. That, unfortunately, was when his leg finally gave out, and he would have landed in a heap if Percy hadn’t neatly caught him with one arm.
“You’re strong,” Kit said as he lowered himself into the nearest chair. His words came out regrettably soft and sweet, when truly Kit had meant it as no more than an observation.
“You’re delirious,” Percy scoffed, and Kit grabbed him by the hem of his coat and pulled him down for a kiss. He had the satisfaction of realizing that Percy was, momentarily, startled. Percy so seldom let himself be seen as anything other than controlled and composed.
“Your turn,” Kit said, fumbling with the inscrutably complicated opening of Percy’s breeches. Beneath the silky fabric, he felt the hard ridge of the other man’s erection. “How the hell do you get this thing out?” he grumbled.
Percy sighed and got his breeches open with what appeared to be one deft flick of his wrist, then stood before Kit, his erection in his hand. Kit, at eye level with Percy’s groin, had never been this close to another man’s cock before, and rather wished the room weren’t so dimly lit. He hooked a finger into Percy’s waistband, thinking to draw the man closer and return the favor.
“I think not,” Percy said tartly. “If you think that what I did was so marvelous, I shudder to imagine what mediocrities you plan to visit upon my cock.”
Kit grinned. “Coward.”
Percy narrowed his eyes. “Fine, then. Have it your way.”
Before Kit could decide which one of them had just goaded the other into this, he firmly tugged Percy’s breeches lower and cupped his hands around the swell of the other man’s arse, pulling him closer.
It was almost certainly true that whatever he did was mediocre at best, but Kit grasped the fundamentals. He got the first inch of Percy’s cock into his mouth, using one hand to stroke the base. Whatever he was doing, it couldn’t have been too awful, because it wasn’t long before Percy’s breaths were coming fast and his fingers were tangled in Kit’s hair.
When Percy came, Kit swallowed because he coul
dn’t figure out any other way not to ruin Percy’s clothes, and he was so appalled with his priorities that he nearly choked himself laughing.
“So pleased you found that amusing,” Percy said, fastening his breeches. “One strives to entertain.”
“I do adore you,” Kit said, gazing up at him with an expression that caused Percy to become intensely interested in the buttons of his coat.
“You really shouldn’t,” Percy said.
“You can’t stop me, you know,” Kit said. “I’ll care about you as much as I please.”
Percy pressed his lips together and left the room without another word.
Chapter 39
Downstairs, Percy found Betty behind the counter.
“I have a favor to ask you,” Percy said. “It relates to your other line of employment.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Kit ought to know better than to talk about that.”
“Give Kit some credit. Give me some credit, for that matter. I’ve been here most days for a month. I have noticed things.”
She sniffed. “Hand it over and I’ll give it a look later on.”
He passed her the bag in which he had stowed all the teaspoons and other knickknacks that Marian had evidently taken to pinching. Percy decided that Marian turning thief was not even on the list of the ten most troubling things he was contending with at the moment, and therefore he was not going to worry about it at all.
“You know,” Betty said, glancing in the bag, “you’re plainly up to no good, and I don’t usually hold that against a man, but if you hurt Kit, I’ll come after you. You hear me?”
“I never doubted it for a minute,” Percy said. “Speaking of which, Kit seems to think he’s coming with me on the, ah, errand I’m running. Do you think you could persuade him to stay in London?”
The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Page 20