Page 4 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
At the name, Kit’s fingers involuntarily closed around the hilt of his dagger. Not because he recognized it, but because he didn’t. He had never had any dealings with a man of that name, and if this stranger were acquainted with a friend of Kit’s, he would have led with that information. Instead, he had announced that he knew exactly who Kit was and what Kit had done. Briefly Kit considered telling this Percy that he had the wrong man. But this strangerknew. Kit could see it in his eyes. Somehow—and Kit would dearly like to know who had informed on him—Percy had found out, and denying the truth would only make getting rid of him more tedious.
Percy’s gaze traveled to Kit’s hand, still wrapped around the hilt of the weapon, and then back to Kit’s face. Nothing in his posture changed, nothing to indicate that he knew he was in danger, not the slightest trace of fear or even vigilance. That, in Kit’s experience, meant one of two things: either the man was enormously stupid and overconfident, which were certainly common enough traits among the wigged and powdered set, or he thought knowing who Kit really was would be enough to keep him safe, in which case he was very stupid indeed.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr.Percy?” Kit said, trying to imbue his words with as much boredom as he could, barely bothering to turn his voice up at the end.
“I have a proposition for you,” Percy said, crossing his legs in the opposite direction. His silver shoe buckle caught a beam oflight from Kit’s candle, drawing Kit’s attention to Percy’s ankle. It was thin, almost delicate, and those clocks on his stocking seemed almost to writhe before Kit’s eyes. For one mad moment, he wondered if he might like whatever proposal Percy had to offer, however insulting.
“Eyes up here, Mr.Webb,” Percy murmured softly, and Kit felt his cheeks heat at having been caught out, but also at the lack of rebuke in the man’s voice. There were times when a lack of rebuke was almost an invitation, certainly a concession, and Kit did not know what to do now that he found himself in one of those situations.
“You enjoyed looking at me downstairs, too,” Percy went on. And, damn it, Kit knew he ought to have been more discreet. He hoped the dimness of the room concealed his flushed cheeks but had the sense that he was rapidly losing whatever upper hand he might have had at the start of this interview.
“I wasn’t the only one looking,” Kit replied.
“Indeed, you were not,” Percy said promptly. “Can you blame me?” He slowly raked his gaze down Kit’s body, and Kit had the inane idea that this man’s penetrating eyes had rendered the heavy oak desk as transparent as glass. “But work before play, Mr.Webb,” he said, a note of arch reprimand in his voice, as if Kit had started this, whatever it was. “Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d like to engage your services.” He paused, as if deliberately giving Kit a chance to get ideas about what those services might be, and whether he would like them. Kit let his thoughts trail down this path for a moment. Patrons were forever attempting to purchase Betty’s favors, so perhaps it wasn’t so very odd for one to attempt to do the same with Kit.
The fact was that Kit didn’t let himself look at men the wayhe was looking at Percy, at least not often, and certainly not so obviously as to get caught. He wondered what it was that had tipped his hand to this gentleman. Kit’s closest friends, such as they were, didn’t even know. He had the uncomfortable sense that this man saw everything Kit wished to conceal.
“I’d like to hire you to remove some papers from the possession of a man of my acquaintance,” Percy said, a trace of laughter in his voice, as if he knew precisely what Kit was thinking and that it wasn’t about stealing papers.
It took a moment for Kit’s brain to catch up with Percy’s meaning. “No,” he said, any thoughts of well-turned ankles and slender calves evaporating into the air. “I don’t do that.”
It would have been easy for Percy to point out that Kit didn’t do thatanymore. But Kit had already learned that this man never said the obvious thing. Instead, the gentleman nodded. “Quite. I’m hoping you’ll make an exception for the right price.” He uncrossed and recrossed his legs, as if he knew what that did to Kit’s ability to think straight—and he probably did, damn it. “And for the right person,” he added, as if to drive home the point.
“I said I don’t—”
“Is it because of your leg? Are you not able to ride?”
Kit searched the man’s face for a sign of insult or insolence, but found only the same amused curiosity. “I can ride,” he said, which wasn’t quite a lie. He could ride, and he could walk, and he could climb stairs, as long as he didn’t mind pain and if one employed a fairly generous definition of ride, walk, and climb.
“Interesting. I thought there had to be a reason for a man with your storied past to live the way you do now.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
Percy rose to his feet but didn’t turn toward the door. “Pity,”he said. “Could have been fun. You can’t tell me that a man with your skills and your history is content to stand in one place all day, warm and safe and terribly, terribly bored.” He adjusted the lace at his cuffs. “Could have been quite fun.”
Kit picked up the knife, allowing its blade to catch the candlelight, so Percy could be under no misapprehension as to what Kit meant. “No,” he repeated, putting his free hand flat on the desk, as if preparing to stand. “Get out.”
Percy left, and as Kit heard his near-silent progress down the stairs, he wondered how the stranger had known things he had hardly admitted to himself.
Chapter4
Percy certainly hadn’t anticipated using his questionable powers of seduction to persuade the man, but if he could get that book from his father and also get into that highwayman’s breeches, he’d consider it time well spent. Not only did Webb have that jawline and those shoulders, but he spoke with a pleasantly rough growl of a voice. He would probably be as boring in bed as he was out of it, but when a man looked like that, one could lower one’s standards.
Buoyed along by this pleasant train of thought, he decided to perform a task he had been delaying.
“The book your father won’t let out of his sight,” Marian had murmured that morning while she and Percy once again sat for their portrait, “is bound in dark green morocco and has faded gold lettering embossed on the cover.”
Percy’s heart had given a thump, and he’d forced himself to remain very still and very calm so as to conceal any trace of his excitement. “So, itismy mother’s book,” he responded, equally low. Until this point, all Percy had known was that his father was taking great pains to guard and conceal a book he kept about his person at all times. That alone told Percy of the book’s value tothe duke. If Percy could steal it, then he could force his father to pay for its return; that was reason enough to want the blasted thing. If the book had been his mother’s, however, that opened up a rather intriguing vista of possibilities.
Percy remembered his mother removing her little green book from the folds of her gown, sometimes running her finger down a page as if to remind herself of something, other times writing something inside. He had never seen its contents but was certain that she had used the book as a means to amass power, and that his father was now doing the same: gathering and hoarding power was the one thing Percy’s parents had in common.
Percy had known from his earliest days that his parents were engaged in a protracted domestic war that seemed to have originated some time before their marriage, and over a cause no more complicated than their long-standing hatred for one another. Percy often only learned of the individual skirmishes long after the fact, and from overheard whispers among servants; this was how he learned the duke locked the duchess in her rooms after the duchess caused the duke’s morning chocolate to be laced with what was either an emetic or arsenic, depending on who one believed. It was also how he learned the duke had his mistress housed in the east wing of Cheveril Castle, and also that the duchess, either in retaliation or in provocation, had sold a coronet and used the proceeds to build a Roman Catholic chapel on the grounds of that same estate.
During these years of civil war, Percy was well aware that his parents were equally matched adversaries, and that the only people who imagined the duchess to be an innocent victim were the same people who could not imagine a woman as conniving as his mother even existing. But none of that mattered: Percy was apartisan of the duchess, a fact as immutable as his yellow hair or his gray eyes.
The duchess had other partisans, of course, and Percy needed to visit one of them to confirm his suspicions about the book.
Lionel Redmond was a distant maternal cousin. He had been sent to seminary in France and was now a Roman Catholic priest in London. His mother’s family, the Percys, were an old family of Catholics. His father’s family, the Talbots, were emphatically Church of England. After decades upon decades of persecution, English Catholics could now, at least, be relatively certain that they could huddle in an alehouse or a cockpit for a makeshift mass without finding themselves burned at the stake, but that didn’t prevent Percy from looking repeatedly over his shoulder as he made his way from the carriage to the narrow little house where his cousin lived.
