Page 54 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
“It won’t come to that.”
“You can’t know that.”
“You don’t get to make choices for me,” Kit said, his voice low and dangerous for reasons that Percy did not understand. “I’m not in your pay or your service.”
“Of course you aren’t! This was supposed to bemyjob,” Percy protested. “When I tried to hire you, you wouldn’t do it! That was the point of our entire arrangement.”
Kit looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he just shook his head. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. Let’s just say that I want to satisfy myself that the job is done right.”
“About that,” Percy cut in. “You’ve never told me what makes you so eager to see my father’s downfall.”
“That makes two of us.”
Well, of course Percy hadn’t. He could hardly go around blabbing about his own illegitimacy. And yet—in a few short days, he and Marian would see that it became common knowledge. The only risk in telling Kit now was that Percy had not yet told another soul about his predicament and did not wish to start. He wanted to take his secret—the one that exposed every facet of his existence as a fiction—and bury it under layers of tissue paper, the way Collins had packed all Percy’s most fragile treasures before taking them off to be sold.
But Kit was looking at him, something hard in his eyes that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. Percy shouldn’t give a fig what was or wasn’t in Kit’s eyes, or in anyone else’s eyes, for that matter.
Every day is market day for secrets, his mother had always said. Secrets could be traded for favors, for countenance, for trust. Secrets could be kept for the same price.
Sometimes one shared a secret so it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. Sometimes one shared a secret to take away a bit of its power. Maybe that was what Percy would be doing if he told Kit about his father.
But secrets could also be shared to show that one trusted the recipient.Here, hold this, I know you won’t break it, his mother had said when handing him a delicate glass bauble. And Percy had remained so still that he had forgotten to breathe.
“My father’s marriage to my mother was invalid,” Percy said, “because he was already married at the time. Someone who knows about this is blackmailing Marian. You see what this means,” Percy said, aware he was rambling and unable to stop, because that would mean looking at Kit’s face. “I’m illegitimate and so is Marian’s daughter. I’m not particularly concerned about myself, beyond the loss of my name, my station, and my fortune, but I can’t forgive my father for doing this to Marian. That’s why I need the book—we’re going to ransom it until my father pays enough for Marian and the baby and me to live on.”
Kit remained utterly still, leaning against the door as he had since entering the room. “Beyond your name, station, and fortune,” he echoed. “Mere trifles.”
“Don’t pretend you care about dukedoms and estates.”
“I don’t,” Kit said promptly. “I do care that you’ve lost things that matter to you.”
“Things you hate.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to pity me.”
“I don’t. I couldn’t.” Kit managed to deliver these last words without any trace of affection, which Percy didn’t think he could see without feeling sick, but with a sneer. Percy didn’t know what that sneer meant, but it put him on familiar ground.
“A friend,” Percy said carefully, “suggested that I ought to regard my father’s first marriage as a youthful peccadillo. And that my quest for revenge is ungenerous of me.”
“The world is filled with people who quietly choose to forget the marriages they made when they were young and didn’t know any better. Sometimes that’s the only way people have a chance at happiness. But your father isn’t some traveling tinker. He had a responsibility.”
“To the estate,” Percy said, nodding.
“Fuck the estate,” Kit said with venom. “No, he had a responsibility to you. He let you believe a lie—a lie about who you are and what your place is. He let you prepare your whole life for a purpose you don’t have.”
“What else could he have done?”
“Other than tell the truth? Well, instead of letting you believe that your worth hinges on your place in a hierarchy that men like him made up centuries ago—a hierarchy that is deranged and infantile and does a great deal of harm, I’ll point out—he could have rebuked all of it. He could have given away his wealth, renounced his title, and lived like the rest of us. He could have lived the sort of life that you’re now meant to live.”
“I don’t think one can renounce a title,” Percy said, because that was the only part of Kit’s speech he could engage with. The rest was not only radical but felt somehow blasphemous, possibly treasonous.
“He should have done it anyway.”
There were moments when the world appeared to remake itself. It had already happened to Percy once this year, when he had learned of his father’s betrayal. And now it was happening again—everything tearing apart at the seams, only to be sewn up in a different shape altogether. The world he now saw was Kit’s, a world where one could refuse to accept the existing order of things, a world where old truths could be jettisoned and new ones put into place.
Percy felt oddly vulnerable, newly hatched in a world where he didn’t know his way. He leaned instinctively toward Kit, not realizing he was doing it until Kit reached out and pulled him close. Percy shut his eyes and rested his forehead against Kit’s.
