Page 28 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
He was speaking in the present tense, as if tomorrow he might get Bridget from the stables and hold up a traveling coach.
“When it goes from being theirs to being yours, you mean,” Percy said.
“Some of it, aye,” Kit said, gesturing at the building around them. “But my partner—”
“Fat Tom? Whistling Nell?”
Kit laughed. “No, my friend. Rob,” he said, immediately feeling the wrongness of speaking Rob’s name to this man. It felt like a betrayal to share Rob’s secret with a man Rob would have counted as an enemy. A man Kit, too, should have counted as an enemy, and indeed would have, if they hadn’t shared an even greater enemy. “He was also Gladhand Jack. Don’t trust everything you hear in a ballad.”
“Never tell me you didn’t hold up two carriages at once in Newcastle, and then escape from prison with your arms tied behind your back. I’m crushed.”
Kit snorted. “Rob took the money and gave it away. He was—good, I suppose. I stole because I wanted revenge and I liked adventure.” It was an oversimplification but not a lie—Kit had begun to steal because he couldn’t have revenge against the one man he wanted to punish, so he settled for spreading his revenge thin, across the entirety of the duke’s class. The Duke of Clare wasn’t the only landowner who destroyed lives; Kit would just have to take his revenge on the targets he had available to him. “But Rob stole because he wanted to do right.”
“He died?” Percy asked, his voice careful and quiet.
“A year ago.”
“Is that why you don’t do it anymore? I thought it was your leg, but is it because it doesn’t feel like you’d be doing right without him?”
The truth of that statement shot through Kit’s veins like ice. He felt like he had spent months trying to figure out what was wrong, what was missing in this new life he was trying to live. And this man had figured it out after hearing not three sentences about Rob.
If Rob had been alive, Kit would have figured out how to work around his bad leg. Even if he hadn’t been able to ever sit on a horse again, he’d have managed to do something. But without Rob, without Rob’s conviction that what they were doing was right and good, then Kit had nothing to spur him on but anger. Kit had found comfort in Rob’s unshakable, albeit lunatic, belief in the righteousness of what they were doing. Not being a madman, he hadn’t agreed himself, but Rob’s principles washed their actions of some of their less savory qualities.
Percy propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Kit. Kit felt his breath catch in his throat.
“Where did you learn to fight?” Percy asked.
Kit didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t tussled with his brothers, Jenny’s brothers, and Rob. And with Jenny, too, come to think. “In the country, children learn to hold their own,” he said.
“Where in the country did you grow up?”
Kit swallowed. He didn’t want to tell Percy the whole story; he didn’t want to talk about it to anybody, and especially not to the Duke of Clare’s son. But the thought wasn’t as distasteful to him as he thought it should be. “Oxfordshire,” he said.
Percy didn’t say anything, but his eyes searched Kit’s face. He was making a choice, Kit realized—he could ask where in Oxfordshire Kit came from, and from there it was only a short distance to the truth coming out. Percy was so close that Kit could see his pulse beating in his throat. They had been even closer when they were sparring—back against chest, cheek against cheek—but this was different.
“What did you want revenge for?” Percy finally asked.
And, Christ, Kit couldn’t answer that, not when he could smell the man’s soap and sweat. Not when the mere inches separating them felt both too near and too far. He put a palm flat on the ground to push himself up to his feet.
Percy stopped him with a hand to Kit’s chest. “Wait,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s none of my business. What I should have said is that—” He hesitated, obviously struggling for words. “I should have said that I can imagine a good number of reasons why a person might want revenge, and I find myself living through one of those reasons.” He didn’t move his hand from Kit’s chest, even though Kit had stopped trying to get up. “I used to think that revenge was about defending one’s honor, but it turns out that honor is just spite dressed up for Sunday.”
Kit placed his hand over Percy’s, holding it in place over his chest, so the other man could feel the rapid thrumming of Kit’s heart. “And are you not a spiteful man?” Kit asked.
“I’m afraid I’m very spiteful indeed,” Percy murmured. “I just didn’t have any reason to find that out about myself until recently. It’s amazing how high-minded one can be when everything goes one’s way.”
“Spite is underrated,” Kit said, embarrassed at how rough his voice was.
Percy slid his hand out from under Kit’s, long fingers dragging across the linen of Kit’s shirt and the heated skin beneath, and brushed a few sweaty strands of hair off Kit’s forehead. “You’re a lovely man,” he said, and it sounded like a reproach.
“Haven’t we just been telling one another how unlovely we are?”
Percy shook his head, his hand coming to rest on Kit’s jaw, his thumb at the corner of Kit’s mouth. He glanced at Kit’s mouth and bit his own lip.
“I—” Kit started without any idea of what he wanted to say. All he knew was that he liked Percy’s hand on him, and that this was a complication neither of them needed.
Percy took his hand away and sat back on his heels. “I know, I know. You don’t do that sort of thing. Well, my loss,” he said lightly, springing to his feet, leaving Kit on the floor looking up at him, unsure whether he was relieved or disappointed.
Kit struggled to his feet and made his way to the corner where his walking stick rested and felt the handle fit into his palm.
