Page 38 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
Chapter28
The sun was setting by the time the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the coffeehouse. It hadn’t yet closed, and it occurred to Percy that they would have to wait some time before they did anything involving that bed Kit had promised.
At the table nearest the door was a face that almost made Percy break stride. It was Collins, and seeing him outside Percy’s apartments was almost like seeing him in a masked disguise.
“What on earth,” Percy started.
“Hush,” the valet hissed. “Sit.”
Percy, after gesturing for Kit to carry on without him, sat.
“Her Grace has a message,” said Collins, softly enough that Percy almost couldn’t hear him.
“I see,” Percy said slowly. No message that had to be relayed in this cloak-and-dagger fashion could possibly be good news.
“She wants you to attend the Davenport ball this evening.”
“I already sent my regrets. That’s the message?” Percy asked, baffled.
“I believe Her Grace means to deliver the message to you in person at the ball, my lord.”
“Right. Of course. I suppose that if she wrote it down like anormal person, then she’d worry that you’d be intercepted by masked brigands and have to eat the notepaper to avoid discovery. We are in a stage comedy, Collins, and I’m afraid you got dragged into it.”
“I hope my lord knows he can rely on my discretion.”
Kit came then with two cups of coffee, placing Percy in the unprecedented position of needing to decide whether to introduce his manservant to the coffeehouse proprietor he was hoping to take as a lover. He could not even imagine what the protocol for that situation might be, so he settled on ignoring Kit entirely and trusting that the man would understand that Percy didn’t intend it as a slight.
“How did you know to find me here?” Percy asked Collins.
“Her Grace intimated as much.”
“I see.” Percy looked across the room and saw Kit grumbling over the pot of coffee. Percy would have to leave now if he hoped to get dressed and ready for the ball. There would be no chance to continue what he and Kit had started at Hampstead Heath. And he could hardly go to Kit and tell him as much without alerting Collins to the existence of a relationship between them.
Collins sighed. “My lord may wish to take his leave of any acquaintances he had hoped to engage in conversation this afternoon,” he said. Then, when Percy narrowed his eyes, he sighed even more heavily. “It has been my honor to work for his lordship since he was seventeen. His lordship is not subtle in certain circumstances.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Also, I saw you and that fellow enter the shop together.”
“It seems that everybody wants to spend their afternoon telling me how unsubtle I am,” Percy griped, getting to his feet. “How lowering.” He left without taking leave of Kit.
As he had no interest in this ball or in anyone he might possibly see there, Percy let Collins dress him and arrange his wig however the man saw fit. In the end, he was arrayed in a great deal of aquamarine satin and a diamond brooch that Percy realized he’d probably have to sell, along with the rest of his jewels, and soon.
“How charming that you’ve chosen to join us,” Marian said languidly when Percy handed her into the carriage. She wore approximately four acres of scarlet damask, a color that made her look positively lurid. His father was already in the carriage and hardly looked up at Percy’s arrival.
At the ball, Percy was greeted with a sea of half-remembered faces—schoolmates, friends of his parents, people he vaguely knew as his father’s hangers-on. He let himself be passed along on a wave of introductions. Yes, he would dance with this young lady. Yes, he would be sure to call on that matron. Yes, he most definitely would like a glass of whatever was on offer.
The ballroom glittered with candles and jewels, and the air was heavy with the scent of perfume and powder and overheated bodies. Music, played by unseen musicians stationed behind a screen, was almost inaudible over the earsplitting chatter. Percy realized exactly how solitary his life had been since returning to London. He was seldom in crowds unless he was at Kit’s, which, even at its most crowded, had nothing on the Davenports’ ballroom.
It wasn’t unpleasant, precisely. But the sights and sounds belonged to Lord Holland, as much as the powder and the wig did. Even the flickering, sparkling quality of the light seemed to belong to another world. He remembered, without wanting to, the smoky shadows at Kit’s, the only light coming from a smatteringof candles and lamps and whatever daylight managed to struggle through the fog outside and the clouds of tobacco inside.
Marian waited until the orchestra played a minuet before seizing Percy’s hand. “You promised me this dance, my lord,” she said, sounding intensely bored by the prospect.
“You do me a great honor, Duchess,” he said, equally bored.
“Do you recall Louise Thierry?” she asked without inflection when the dance took them close enough for her to speak unheard by anyone else.
“One finds her hard to forget,” he murmured. Louise Thierry was the cause of all their troubles: the name scrawled onto the parish register in the French church, the woman his father married.
“That was, evidently, a professional alias, or perhaps poor spelling. Her real name is Elsie Terry.”
Percy hoped he managed not to show any surprise on his face. “How very common,” he drawled. He had assumed that his father took a Frenchwoman to church because that was the only means he had of getting into her bed. If he had wished to marry an Englishwoman, why on earth had he brought her to France? And if she had gone with him to France as his mistress, then why had he bothered marrying her at all?
