“I don’t think I could keep him away from you unless I locked him up. Even then, he’d find a way. And I think you know that.”
“Surely, he knows it’s a bad idea, what with his leg.”
“Kit does a lot of things that are bad ideas,” Betty said, pointedly flicking her eyes over Percy.
“Seriously, Betty, he listens to you.”
“That’s right. He does. And so should you. When the pair of you are done with this job, let him be. He deserves better. There’s more to him than you know, and he’s had enough misery in his life without you adding to it.”
“I see,” Percy said, because while he didn’t care for being ordered about, he also couldn’t disagree with anything that Betty said.
Betty looked like she was about to say something, but then something over Percy’s shoulder caught her eye. “Well, I’ll be fucked,” she said.
Percy turned and saw a woman enter the shop. She wore a cloak of black velvet and had unpowdered red hair. At first, he thought he was looking at Flora Jennings, so strong was the resemblance, but then realized this woman was several years older, at least forty.
“And who would that be?” Percy asked. “Does Kit have a policy of only allowing women into the shop if they have red hair?”
“That’s Scarlett,” Betty said. And then, when Percy snorted in disbelief, she added, “Obviously it’s not her real name, but she’s Mistress Scarlett, you know?”
“Ah.”
“And she’s also—”
Betty was interrupted by the entrance of Rob from somewhere else in the building. He strode over to Scarlett and embraced her, all but lifting her off the ground. “Mother, darling,” he said.
“She’s Rob’s mother?” Percy asked, astonished. “Which means that Flora is his sister?”
Betty gave him an appraising look. “I’m not sure about that. It could just be an uncanny likeness.”
Percy regarded the pair and tried to recall Flora’s face. Rob and Scarlett didn’t resemble one another terribly, apart from the red hair and a suggestion of sharpness about the jaw and cheekbones. Flora, in fact, looked more like Scarlett than Rob did. Rob looked more like— Percy tilted his head and searched his memory, but couldn’t quite arrive at the resemblance.
Through the general din and clatter of the shop, Percy heard a heavy, uneven tread on the stairs and automatically turned his head in time to see Kit duck underneath the spider web. Percy had watched that blasted thing grow to shocking proportions in the past few weeks, and he would have taken it upon himself to dispose of it if not for the fact that Kit seemed to like it there. This time part of the web caught in Kit’s hair—which, given the state of Kit’s hair, was hardly surprising—and Kit carefully disentangled it. Then he murmured something that looked awfully like “beg pardon” to the spider.
Percy stared, some combination of emotions he preferred not to identify roiling in his heart. Then he crossed the room. “You’re an industrious little monster,” he told the spider. The spider did something ghastly with one of her neatly wrapped trophies. Percy decided not to think about that, either. “You wove a pretty web, but you are not in the least bit practically minded. One relates. This is a terrible place for your home, however lovely I’m certain it is.” He reached his hand up toward the creature.
“What are you doing?” Kit asked, sounding irate.
“She’s going to wind up lost in your hair, and that’s no life for an honest spider. I’m going to move her someplace where nobody will bother her and she can eat all the flies and midges she pleases. All right?” When Kit didn’t object, Percy let the spider crawl onto his hand, somehow managing not to faint or shriek while doing so. “All right, madam, away you go,” he said, carrying it over to the bookcases. “You’ll make your home on the very top shelf, over where the proprietor sees fit to keep Mr. Hume. Nobody is in the least likely to disturb you there.”
That accomplished, he dusted his hands off on his breeches and found Kit looking at him oddly, but escaped into the street before he had to figure out why.
Chapter 40
“What’s this?” Rob asked when Kit and Betty were sorting through the contents of the parcel Percy had left with them. The shop was closed, and they worked by the light of an oil lamp, separating out the items that could be sold immediately from those that would need to have monograms or other marks polished off.
Kit didn’t answer right away, because it was more than obvious they were receiving stolen goods. The objects on the table were a motley assortment of silverware, handkerchiefs, earbobs, and buttons. Kit hadn’t been surprised that Percy wanted to raise some quick money—in his circumstances, selling off a couple of shirt studs was honestly something he ought to have done quite a while ago. What surprised him was the sheer assortment of silverware on the table: Kit had counted spoons with at least eight distinct monograms. This could mean that Percy had been busily pilfering from every dinner table he visited, but given the earbobs, Kit rather thought he had help from the mysterious Marian.
“What did your mother want?” Betty asked Rob.
“To scold me, which is all anybody wants from me these days.”
“Poor you. Imagine, people being upset with you after the stunt you pulled.”
“I keep telling all of you that it was unavoidable. Consider how much it hurts my feelings not to be believed.” Bending over the table, Rob picked up a spoon and held it up to the light. “Monogrammed,” he said disapprovingly. Then he looked at a silver hairbrush. “And so is this. This is the Duke of Clare’s coat of arms. Do you want to tell me what you’re doing with the Duke of Clare’s hairbrush?”
“More likely the duchess’s, I should think,” Kit said, his mouth dry. He had known he’d need to come clean to Rob at some point but had put it off time and again. “You know the job I’ve mentioned? The Duke of Clare is the mark.”
Whatever Kit had expected from Rob, it wasn’t total silence. It wasn’t Rob putting a shoulder on Kit’s arm and taking the seat beside him. Kit kept his attention on an ornate silver soup spoon. He didn’t want to look at Rob, and he certainly didn’t want to look at Betty.
“I would have told you before the job,” Kit said. “It’s only that the situation is a bit complicated.”
“You’re going to hold up the Duke of Clare’s carriage. Yes, I’d damned well say it’s complicated, especially since you’re fucking his son.”
Kit dropped the spoon to the table with a clatter. “I—what? You recognized him? You knew?” Kit’s mind reeled. Rob and Betty were looking at one another, and Kit glanced between them. “What am I missing?”
“I told him not to involve himself in this mess,” Betty told Rob. “But do you think he listened?”
Rob buried his head in his hands. When he looked up a moment later, he seemed to have come to some kind of decision. “You’re in love with the Duke of Clare’s son.”
“I didn’t say—” Kit began, but Rob cut him off.
“And together you’re going to hold up his father. And why, exactly, is the duke’s pretty son so eager to steal from his papa?”
“There’s an item he wants. I believe it belonged to his mother. He says we can have everything else in the carriage.”
“You idiot. He means to kill his father and let you hang for it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You would if you were thinking straight. He’s used some combination of lust and knowledge of what the duke did to completely addle your senses. This scheme ought to be obvious even to a baby.”
“When he first came here, he didn’t know I had any particular reason to hate his father,” Kit said, the excuse sounding feeble to his own ears.
“Where did he get your name, Kit?” Rob demanded. “Is there anyone who knows you’re Gladhand Jack who doesn’t know that the Duke of Clare had your wife transported? Because I can’t think of any. He knows who you are, and he’s setting you up.”
“If Percy wanted to kill his fathe
r, I don’t think he’d choose such a roundabout way,” Kit said. “And I don’t think he could—” He broke off. He had been about to say that he didn’t think Percy could feign affection for him, but Percy could probably feign anything he pleased. And yet, Kit didn’t think Percy was doing so.
When Kit told Percy that he adored him, he had been speaking the truth. And Percy’s only response had been that Kit shouldn’t. But that hadn’t sounded like a warning so much as the protest of a person who didn’t believe he deserved to be loved. It could all be an act, and Kit’s refusal to believe so might just be because his prick—or, even worse, his heart—was not reliably rational.
He couldn’t have said exactly when it happened, or why, but Kit found that he had come to trust Percy, had come to have faith in the man. He knew there was more to Percy’s scheme than Percy had confessed: he had seen the way Percy measured out his words when speaking of his father’s bigamy, weighing each one to make sure it wasn’t too much. There was a good deal the man had left untold, but Kit felt certain it wasn’t anything that would harm him.
“My mother told me someone was asking about you,” Rob said. “I’d bet it was your lordling.”
“Your mother was as surprised as I was to discover that I was doing a job for the Duke of Clare’s son. She tried to persuade me not to,” Kit said.
“If you think my mother isn’t an accomplished actress, you’ve gone even softer in the head than I had thought, and believe me, I already think your judgment is frighteningly impaired,” Rob said. “Have Tom do the job. Stay away from it.”
“I need to be there.”
“Oh, of course. You need to see Clare punished.”
“No,” Kit said immediately. “I do want Clare punished, and I’ll be glad to see it happen with my own eyes. Of course I will.” He felt his face heat as he spoke, knowing how much he was revealing. “But I need to be there to make sure Percy’s all right.”
Rob raked his hands through his hair and groaned. Betty swore and got up from the table.
Thinking he’d just as well give his friends time to complain about him behind his back, Kit reached for his walking stick and hauled himself up the stairs and into his bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, his heart racing and his stomach churning.
Even through the closed door, he could hear Betty and Rob talking. About him, no doubt.
Kit absently patted his hip in search of a flask that hadn’t been there for a year. Instead, he stretched out an arm for the jug of water that sat on the washstand and swallowed a mouthful.
It was a long while before he heard footsteps on the stairs. It was Rob, of course.
“Mind if I come in?” Rob asked, cracking the door open. He had a cup in his hand.
Kit gestured for him to enter, and Rob sat on the bed beside him and handed him the cup of tea. “Betty made it, so it’s all right.”
“Thanks,” Kit said.
“So,” Rob said. “What do you need me to do to help you with this job?”
Kit didn’t ask whether Rob was agreeing to help as an olive branch to Kit or as a way to ensure Kit didn’t meet any trouble. “Only the usual things. Make sure something happens at the coaching inn to delay any other carriages in the duke’s party—a loose axle or a horse needing to be reshod. Check the carriage for any pistols stowed under the cushions. The drunker you can get the coachmen and any outriders, the better. If they have any weapons, see if you can pinch them. After the duke’s carriage leaves the inn, ride ahead to where Percy and I are waiting.”
“Percy is he now?”
“I’m hardly going to call him Lord Holland.”
“I suppose not,” Rob sighed.
“I know you and Betty think I’m being foolish, but I’ve planned this job as well as I planned any other job. Better, even, because it’s amazing how much more clearly you can think when you aren’t foxed half the time. I’ve spent time in the duke’s stables and know that his horses are skittish and his servants are a close-mouthed group. He’ll travel with his own horses, even though that slows his pace, because he doesn’t trust them to strangers.”
“I only want you to be safe, and the more emotional a job is, the less likely it is to go off without a hitch. You lose your instinct to back off.”
Kit had the distinct impression that Rob was talking about himself. “Are you certain you don’t want to tell me what’s been bothering you?” Kit asked.
“Nothing’s bothering me,” Rob answered.
“I’m not going to pry, but we both know that you haven’t been yourself since you got back. And that’s fine. Obviously, whatever kept you away was serious enough to—well, serious enough to keep you away. But if you want to talk to someone, you know I won’t spill your secrets.” Kit swallowed, suddenly overwhelmed by the sense that he was losing the best friend he had ever had. “I never have, you know.”
“I do. I do know. But I can’t. Trust me when I say that it would complicate your life more than you can even imagine.”
“Even so, Rob. When haven’t we been willing to complicate our lives for one another? That’s how friendship works.” At least, Kit had thought so.
Chapter 41
The weather, Percy decided, was suspiciously fine. It was the sort of crisp and clear late autumn day that made summer seem a distant and slightly vulgar memory and the coming winter seem almost implausible. Hardly fifty miles outside London, the fog and smoke were nowhere to be seen in the Oxfordshire countryside.
Truly, Percy could not have chosen more pleasant weather for a highway robbery.
Before leaving, Kit had shown Percy a map, pointing with one callused index finger at a place between Tetsworth and an area simply marked “pasture.”
“See that bend in the road? There’ll be a copse of trees right there,” Kit had said, a glint of excitement in his eyes. “It’s not so different from the place I showed you in Hampstead. Be there at dusk.”
They traveled separately, Kit and the sharpshooter together in a stagecoach, Percy on horseback, and Rob by his own means.
Early in the morning, Percy dressed in his finest riding costume and told Collins not to wait up for him, hoping the valet would interpret this to mean Percy planned a spree of debauchery. Then he rode to an inn, bought a round of drinks for the patrons, loudly announced his plan to buy a hunting dog from a man in Kent whose dog had recently given birth to a litter of puppies. That accomplished, he got back on the road in the direction of Oxfordshire, changed into nondescript clothes and removed his wig, and arrived at the designated copse of trees well before dusk and with a horse who had a distinct air of being hard done by.
He had brought with him a loaf of bread and a flask of ale but was too nervous to do more than break off crumbs of crust and roll them between his fingers. He checked the position of the sun in the sky. It was not quite dusk, but it was close, and still there was no sign of Kit.
There was some shameful part of him that hoped Kit and the girl did not turn up. Then Percy wouldn’t have to go through with this.
There was an even more shameful part of him that desperately needed Kit to come, because otherwise Percy would know himself to be abandoned.
Right when he was about to give up deciding which hope was more shameful, he heard soft footsteps and turned to find Kit approaching him. With him was a slight figure in breeches and which Percy would not have guessed to be a girl if Kit hadn’t informed him beforehand.
Percy was certain he had schooled his face into something suitably bland but still Kit greeted him with a long look and a warm hand on his shoulder. Then Kit reached into the satchel that was slung over his shoulder and pulled out Percy’s black prizefighting leathers, which Percy had given him the previous day. “Change,” Kit said.
Percy, spurred more by the vestiges of some old and defunct sense of propriety than by any actual principles, opened his mouth to object on the grounds that a girl was mere yards away. But then he went behind a tree and did as he was told. He plaited his hair
and tucked it into one of Kit’s decrepit tricorns, then took the false scar, which was still intact after he had peeled it off the last time, and stuck it to his face.
When he emerged, Kit looked him up and down. “Good,” he said. Then he took a flask from the satchel and handed it to Percy. “Drink.”
“Are we only speaking in monosyllables today?” Percy asked, and only when he had spoken did he realize that those were the first words to have left his mouth since Kit arrived. He opened the flask and sniffed it, dismayed to discover that it contained gin. It was filled to the very top, so he guessed that Kit must not care much for gin, either. He took a sip, and then took another one. When he made to hand it back to Kit, the man shook his head.
“You keep it.”
“Is my terror that obvious?” Percy asked, pitching his voice low enough that the girl, who was sitting on the ground examining the fletching of her arrows, would not hear.
“No,” Kit said, looking him in the eye. “You always hide it well. Do you remember what I told you about the trick to a good holdup?”
“Not caring whether you live or die,” Percy said immediately, because how could he forget that?
“I lied.”
Percy looked at Kit closely. Kit wasn’t as bad a liar as Percy had once supposed. He was just out of practice and hadn’t quite got control of his tells. Now, for instance, his eyes were opened a bit too wide, as if he were actively trying not to look shifty. And his hands were fisted at his sides, as if he were trying not to fidget.
Percy decided not to call him on this lie. There would be no point to quarreling over it right now. And besides, this was Kit’s way of telling Percy to be careful, which was just another way of Kit saying that he cared.
Instead of answering, he leaned in and kissed Kit on the cheek.
Every time a coach passed, Percy thought he might be sick, even though he knew it wouldn’t be his father’s coach. The plan was for Rob to ride ahead and warn Kit and Percy when the duke had left his last inn.
The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Page 21