Page 29 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
“We’re done for the day,” Kit said, and went through the door to the coffeehouse without looking back over his shoulder.
Chapter22
When Percy, uncomfortably sweaty and with a pulled muscle in his shoulder, opened the door to his room, he wasn’t expecting to see Marian sitting on the edge of his bed. As she had the previous time she visited Percy’s room, she once again wore a pair of his dark breeches and had her hair in a plait down her back.
“It took you long enough,” she said. “Where were you?” She gave him a curious look. “I hope nobody saw you coming in looking like that.”
Despite himself, he blushed. He could only imagine what she saw—his hair was unbound, and he still wore the buckskins and jerkin in which he had sparred with Kit.
“I came in through the kitchens.”
“You’ll have given Cook palpitations, thinking brigands were after her shortcrust recipe. Really, though, where were you?”
“I’d happily spill all my secrets to you, but how long do we have until your maid notices that you’ve gone missing?”
Marian examined her fingernails. “I put some laudanum in her bedtime chocolate.”
Percy had been undoing the dozen buttons that fastened thejerkin but stopped and stared at Marian. Poisoning the servants seemed rather uncalled for.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I only gave her enough to make her sleep heavily. And if you’re squeamish about that, I can’t think how you mean to get through a robbery where actual weapons are involved.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve been up to, dressed like that?” he asked, gesturing at her breeches, then looking pointedly at the dirt on her hands, the small tear on the shoulder of her shirt. The sole was loose on one of her slippers, and beneath her eyes were circles so dark, they were nearly purple. Whatever she had been doing, it wasn’t simply sneaking around. It was dangerous.
“No. Are you?” she asked.
“I’ve been learning how to hold up a carriage.”
She blinked at him. “I thought you said your highwayman would do the job.”
Percy had not been looking forward to breaking the news to Marian. “Well, you see. Instead, he’s going to teach me to do it.”
“That’s a terrible idea. You’ll get killed.”
“It seems to be our best chance.”
“What if he recognizes you?”
“Highwaymen wear masks,” Percy said. “Don’t they? Besides, Father won’t pay any attention to my face. If someone is beneath Father’s notice, he literally does not notice them. He still calls the footman George, even though George died ten years ago. Anyway, don’t worry about me. Think about the book.”
“I’ve had another letter from the blackmailer.” From inside her shirt, she removed a folded sheet of paper and handed it to him.
“Already?” he asked. They still had over a month before the payment was due, and Percy needed that time.
“It’s not a demand for early payment,” Marian said. “Read it for yourself.”
Percy scanned the letter’s contents. The paper was flimsy and cheap but the writing was bold, each pen stroke a flourish. “‘Dear Madam,’” he read. “‘I hope this missive finds you in good health and the best of spirits. Your present circumstances are of a sort that must be uniquely trying, even without the added hardship of blackmail.’ Good God,” he said to Marian, glancing up, “one knows things are bad when one’s blackmailer sympathizes. ‘Given the nature of our previous correspondence, it is unlikely that you’ll put much faith in what I say, dear lady, but please believe me when I say that I would much prefer never to have come into the knowledge that has formed the basis of our communications. If I am to be frank—and, really, to whom can one be frank if not the person whose fortune and reputation one holds ransom—I would much prefer you give me the five hundred pounds and let me disappear into the night. I assure you it will be my life’s work to keep your secrets. Surely, you will protest that I ought to keep your secret out of the goodness of my heart; the trouble is that my heart isn’t in the least good. I am, to the core, a mercenary creature. Please consider this letter a statement of my good-faith promise to uphold my end of our bargain; while I am a rotten sort of fellow, I am not a dishonest one. I anxiously await your reply by the usual means. Your obedient servant, X.’”
Percy refolded the paper and handed it to Marian, his eyebrows raised. “The usual means? Exactly how many letters haveyou exchanged with this blackguard? And is his correspondence always so solicitous?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “He’s exhausting.”
“You don’t mean to take this man at his word, do you?” he asked.
She let out a laugh, harsh and sudden. “No. That I do not.” Then she leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, turned, and climbed out the window.
Chapter23
By the end of the first week of December, both Percy and Flora were appearing nearly every day at the coffeehouse.
