He lined himself up and paused, just letting himself enjoy this feeling of almost breaching Percy, prolonging that moment when need overwhelmed every other sensation. Then he pushed in a little and swore at the grasping heat, watching himself sink in inch by inch.
Percy started to boss him around, because of course he did. “Wait, yes, keep going, right there, do that again.” Kit complied and buried his face in Percy’s shoulder, half laughing and half overcome with the pleasure of it, the joy of it being Percy he was doing this with. He slowed his thrusts and kissed Percy, lazy and slow.
Kit took one of Percy’s legs—the uninjured one—and put it over his shoulder. “This all right?” he asked, turning his head to kiss Percy’s ankle.
“No,” Percy said, his words belied by the fact that they were spoken while he arched up into Kit’s touch. “You’re doing this all wrong.”
Kit stilled. “Oh?”
“You were supposed to make it dirty. I wanted to—God, yes, do that again—desecrate this place. And instead, you’re being lovely.”
Kit looked down at him. “If it makes you feel any better, the bedcovers are going to be ruined.”
Percy snorted. “See, this is what I mean. I’m not supposed to be laughing. You’re so bad at this, it’s quite a—” He broke off when Kit tilted his hips up at a different angle, his words trailing off into a guttural moan. “Quite a disappointment.”
Kit carried on disappointing him until Percy reached down and stroked himself until he came, whispering Kit’s name, digging his fingernails into Kit’s shoulders, and Kit tumbled over the edge after him.
After, they lay side by side, catching their breath.
“If you think,” Kit said, getting out of bed, “that anything we do together could desecrate a single fucking thing, you’re an idiot.” He stepped into his buckskins. “And I don’t think you want to desecrate this place, or your memories of it. You love it. It’s your home, for all I’d like to see it rot. But you aren’t going to use me and make out that what we’re doing, what we are to one another, is something vile.” He dug through his satchel until he came up with a cloth to hand Percy, then turned his back while Percy got dressed.
“I meant,” Percy said, coming up behind him, “that this isn’t something I could have if I were who I thought I was. The Duke of Clare can’t have his—lover, I suppose—in his chambers.” He put a tentative hand on Kit’s shoulder. “As an equal. I wanted to do something he couldn’t. And I meant what I said about you being lovely. You always are.”
Kit turned. Percy’s hair was loose around his shoulders, tangled from Kit’s hands. His lips were kiss swollen, his shirt was wrinkled, his neck was red and rough from Kit’s stubble.
“Percy, I know.” He tucked a strand of hair behind Percy’s ear. “I know that. Let’s get going.”
Percy left with many thanks to the servants and a liberal distribution of silver coins, then mounted his horse with a good deal of muttering about how he never learned to plan his days around a good buggering.
“Can we make it to London by nightfall on these horses?” Percy asked.
“You can,” Kit said, glancing at the sky, and then looking at the horses. “I’ll take the stagecoach from Tetsworth and arrange for this mare to be brought back to her owner.”
“I can wait for you,” Percy offered, and he was a good enough liar that Kit thought he might actually mean it.
“You really can’t. You need to get back to town as soon as you may, and your horse, however much of a fuss he might make about it, will get you there faster than the stagecoach.”
Percy stroked his horse’s mane. “Balius’s pedigree is too refined and his sensibilities too delicate to live in this common sort of way,” Percy remarked, seemingly for the benefit of the horse. “He was raised in the lap of equine luxury and has been quite at sixes and sevens without a steady supply of apples and other treats. I know, my darling,” he told the horse. “I feel quite the same way.”
As they proceeded down the drive, Kit gestured across the broad expanse of parkland. “Remember that village I told you about? Cheveril? Do you know what happened to it?” When Percy shook his head, Kit went on. “Your father razed it to the ground to provide a better view from the castle.”
“I remember it,” Percy said, his eyes fixed on the empty stretch of grass where Cheveril had once stood. “I’m ashamed to say I never thought about what became of the people who lived there.”
“My father’s inn was pulled down. He tried to make a go of it two villages over, but that village already had a tavern. He and my mother caught sick and were dead by spring of ’41.”
“1741,” Percy said slowly. Kit could almost see him doing the sums. “It was the same year your daughter died. You lost them all at once, didn’t you?”
“It was a bad winter,” Kit said. He hadn’t known until years later that the winter of 1740–41 had been bad for the entire country and even beyond rather than a private torment visited on him alone. “Needless to say, your father didn’t lift a finger to help.”
“And instead, he had a girl transported for poaching,” Percy said. “A mother.”
“Rob and I couldn’t spend another minute in this part of the country, and, well, neither of us had much interest in making an honest living at that point.”
“No, I imagine not.” Percy swallowed. “I knew my father was a bad landlord, but I didn’t realize how bad.”
Kit shook his head and turned his gaze to the empty expanse where Cheveril used to stand. “Maybe you didn’t realize about Cheveril, and maybe you didn’t realize about my family. But you know that your family’s fortune was built on the losses of others. You know that your father has property in the West Indies. You can’t possibly think that anything built with that money is good. Surely, you know the cost of all this.” He gestured around them, encompassing the castle, the garden, the grounds. “You shouldn’t need to hear about the destruction of a village a stone’s throw from your home, the story of a man you’ve gone to bed with, a baby whose grave you saw. I don’t care about your staircase and your gardens. They’re beautiful, but they aren’t worth the price, and I don’t want to know anyone who thinks they are.”
He hadn’t looked at Percy while he was speaking. Partly because he didn’t want to see any sign of skepticism, partly because he needed to deliver that speech with as few concessions to Percy’s feelings as possible and was afraid that the sight of his face would make him soften the blow.
“Now let’s go,” Kit said, and led the way through the gate.
Chapter 47
By the time Percy approached Clare House, it was nearly midnight. Leaving a furious Balius with the grooms, he saw no sign that they regarded him as a wanted man. So that, at least, was a good sign. They did, however, whisper among themselves, too softly for Percy to overhear. News of his arrival must have spread quickly, because Collins met him at the door.
“My lord,” Collins said, looking as frazzled and unkempt as Percy had ever seen him. “I expected you yesterday morning.”
“Too much brandy,” Percy said, and regretted it immediately. He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry to have given you cause to worry.”
“Your father, my lord. I’m afraid he was injured on the road to Cheveril. Her Grace said that he was shot while defending her from a footpad. But, I’m afraid . . .” Collins faltered.
Percy’s heart was beating so hard, he worried Collins could see it through his waistcoat. “Out with it, Collins.”
“He’s alive but unlikely to remain that way for long.”
“I see. Where is Marian?”
“Her Grace disappeared soon after bringing the duke home.”
“Disappeared?” Percy repeated.
“In the confusion of His Grace being carried in and the physician being called for, she simply . . . disappeared. She didn’t ask for the carriage or have a footman call her a hackney. I can only imagine that she went on foot, although she must have changed he
r clothes at some point, because she was”—Collins cleared his throat—“quite covered in blood upon her arrival.”
Percy shuddered. He could not think why Marian would have left or where she would have gone. Nothing about their plan could be furthered by her absence—indeed, the reality was quite the opposite.
“Her encounter with the footpads no doubt did in her nerves,” he added firmly. “What have the coachman and outriders said about this attack?” Percy tried not to look like he was holding his breath.
“They’ve all said the same thing. The duke’s carriage was held up outside Tetsworth. Two pistol shots were heard, and then Her Grace called out for the coach to drive on because the duke was injured.”
That much was good. Percy allowed himself to feel something like relief, because at least nobody had connected him or Kit with the holdup. There was another matter he needed to discuss with his valet, though. He steered Collins into an empty parlor and shut the door behind them. “Do you remember hearing that when I was an infant, my father moved his mistress into the north wing of Cheveril Castle?”
“I’m afraid it was discussed for some years, my lord.”
“Did anyone ever mention what she looked like?”
Collins furrowed his brow. “Red hair, rather buxom.”
Percy’s heart thumped, because that fit the description of Elsie Terry. “Why did she leave?”
Collins shocked Percy by barking out a laugh. “The duke brought her there to irritate your mother, but your mother spiked his guns by befriending the girl at once. They were fast friends at the end of a twelvemonth, and when the duke caught on, he made her go. To hear the older servants speak of it, by the time your mother was done with her, she was as much a partisan of the duchess as you or I.”
“Well, how the devil did it never come up between them that Elsie Terry had married my father?”
“She did what?” Collins gasped.
“Goodness, have I finally succeeded in shocking you? Yes, a good year and a half before the duke purported to marry my mother, and she—or somebody who knows her well enough to be in on the secret—is blackmailing Marian and me.”
“But she apparently doted on your mother,” Collins said.
“Well, she did wait until my mother was dead. And she is, lawfully, the Duchess of Clare.”
“Oh dear,” Collins said, blanching.
“I really ought to have broken it to you more carefully. Here,” he said, directing Collins to a chair. “Sit down and I’ll send for some brandy.” He clapped Collins on the shoulder and pulled the cord to summon a servant. “I ought to see my father,” he said, and departed.
The only light in the duke’s chambers came from a branch of candles at the bedside. The physician left after bowing to Percy and telling him a number of things that all amounted to the duke’s imminent death.
Percy stood at the head of the bed. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said, taking the book from his pocket. “But I suspect that you’ve left me with enough to destroy the Talbot name for generations. Well, to be fair, you destroyed it with a clandestine marriage and a lifetime of bigamy, but let’s not get mired in details.” Percy opened the Bible to the list of names on its flyleaf, then flipped through the pages of apparently random circlings and underscores. “What I have here is a list of Jacobite supporters. I suspect that the rest of the book contains the particulars—amounts of money, promises made, and so forth. That’s all entirely in keeping with my mother’s priorities, and I suppose the only question is whether the evidence in this book involves past treason or a future plot. But what can you have been up to? I doubt you’ve become a Jacobite. I can only imagine that you were using this book either to blackmail the people listed on the first page or to otherwise bend them to your will.”
Percy didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he thought his father’s eyes flickered. “The question is, what shall I do with it? I suppose I could carry on blackmailing people and then use that money to pay my own blackmailer, and we’d have an entirely blackmail-based economy. I must confess that doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Alternatively, I could give this book to His Majesty and see what the Crown’s gratitude will do for me. If I also hand over the key to this code—and, Father, I know where it is—I bet I could get a title of my very own. Not a dukedom, but something that my descendants could build up into a suitably impressive legacy.”
The duke’s mouth opened and closed, and Percy thought he was trying to talk. Percy found he didn’t care. He didn’t care about what might be his father’s dying words. On his list of things that mattered to him, this ranked far below Marian’s whereabouts and the question of what to do with the book. Possibly lower than whether Balius needed to be reshod.
“Or I could throw the book into the river. I could live my own life, not one either of my parents wished for me. You shot me,” Percy said. “And I was hardly even surprised. I robbed you at gunpoint and never had a single qualm about extorting funds from you. I don’t want to be that person.” As he spoke the words, he realized that he didn’t want to be the person his mother had shaped him into or the person his father wished he were. He didn’t want any part of their expectations.
Percy’s eyes prickled and he cursed himself. But he wasn’t grieving his father’s imminent death so much as he was sad about not having anything to grieve.
The next morning, he woke to the news that the duke had died.
Chapter 48
Kit returned to a coffeehouse that remained relentlessly normal, frustratingly unchanged. The seats were filled with the usual patrons, who demanded their usual drinks and had the usual conversations. The weather continued to slink from a damp and foggy autumn toward a dismally cold winter. His leg was as uncooperative as ever. Betty was her typical self, even if she directed glances toward Kit that seemed to go right through him.
Throughout the day, every time a man in a wig and a fine coat walked in the door, Kit’s heart gave an extra beat, even though he knew Percy would be busy doing whatever men did when their friends shot their fathers after holdups gone wrong. Kit frankly couldn’t imagine what that entailed, but he wished Percy would come by and tell him. He wanted to know that Percy would ever come back and would continue to come back. It seemed a small thing to ask for, an almost pitifully modest bit of reassurance.
They had parted on less-than-ideal terms at the gates of Cheveril Castle. Throughout the interminable stagecoach journey back to London, Kit wished his parting words to Percy had been about how much he thought what they had between them was worth keeping rather than a rant about the evils of the landowning classes.
But the truth was that what they had between them wasn’t worth keeping if Percy didn’t understand that the things he valued—the things whose loss he felt as a calamity—were terrible and dangerous, both to Kit and to everyone who lived under the thumb of people like Percy’s father. If Percy didn’t understand that, then maybe he shouldn’t come back.
When Kit looked around his shop, it felt empty and dull without Percy. He tried to remind himself that Percy had never belonged there, just as he had never belonged anywhere near Kit. Kit had known that all along, even if he had lost sight of that fact somewhere along the way.
He tried not to think about how very badly he had lost sight of that fact. He tried even harder not to think about how Percy seemed to have done so as well.
He tried not to think about the two nights they had spent on the dirt floor of a barn, nor about the hour they had spent on silk bedcovers in that godforsaken palace.
More often than he liked, he thought back to that afternoon at Cheveril Castle, and wondered if maybe all along Percy just wanted him as a bit of rough, a criminal for hire. He pictured Percy among all his luxuries, spread out cool and clean on that blue silk, like something Kit had never wanted to want. Kit was coarse and rough, and it was too easy to believe that Percy truly had wanted Kit to sully the place.
He couldn’t quite make himself believe that
, though. Whenever he tried, he instead remembered something domestic and mundane—Percy absently tearing his cake into two pieces and giving half to Kit, Percy’s lips brushing a kiss onto his knuckles—and he knew how Percy felt. He couldn’t even convince himself that he was deluded or foolish—he knew how Percy felt with a bone-deep certainty, with a surety that was something like faith.
That didn’t mean he’d come back, though. The world was filled with people who felt all kinds of things and couldn’t manage to shape those feelings into something that would last. But Kit knew he wanted that, and knew he was prepared to do whatever it took to make it happen.
Perhaps spending time with Percy had knocked something loose inside him, as if maybe being with Percy had made Kit take stock of what exactly he needed to be content. Weeks ago, Betty had teased him about pining away for a life of crime, but what he had really missed was the sense of setting things right. In a world that was teeming with unfairness, Kit wanted to be a hand on the scale of justice, or maybe he wanted to tear the scales down.
And, ideally, he would do all that with Percy, if not at his side then at least near at hand.
“The lads at table five started a betting pool for when Rob will come back and how bad his excuse for buggering off will be this time,” Betty said while they were closing up.
Kit snorted. Neither hide nor hair had been seen of Rob in the days since the robbery. All Kit could think was that maybe Rob had taken a liking to disappearing without a trace. Perhaps this was going to be a regular occurrence—vanishing for a year and then returning without warning. “I probably ought to go see his mother,” Kit said, feeling very resigned about it. “Maybe he told her this time.”
After walking Betty home that night, he took his time on the trip home. There was no hurry, and he had made up his mind to go easy on his leg. But when he approached the darkened coffeehouse, he saw a figure leaning against the door, obscured by shadows.
The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Page 25