Page 71 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
“In the confusion of His Grace being carried in and the physician being called for, she simply . . . disappeared. She didn’t ask for the carriage or have a footman call her a hackney. I can only imagine that she went on foot, although she must have changed her clothes at some point, because she was”—Collins cleared his throat—“quite covered in blood upon her arrival.”
Percy shuddered. He could not think why Marian would have left or where she would have gone. Nothing about their plan could be furthered by her absence—indeed, the reality was quite the opposite.
“Her encounter with the footpads no doubt did in her nerves,” he added firmly. “What have the coachman and outriders said about this attack?” Percy tried not to look like he was holding his breath.
“They’ve all said the same thing. The duke’s carriage was held up outside Tetsworth. Two pistol shots were heard, and then Her Grace called out for the coach to drive on because the duke was injured.”
That much was good. Percy allowed himself to feel something like relief, because at least nobody had connected him or Kit with the holdup. There was another matter he needed to discuss with his valet, though. He steered Collins into an empty parlor and shut the door behind them. “Do you remember hearing that when I was an infant, my father moved his mistress into the north wing of Cheveril Castle?”
“I’m afraid it was discussed for some years, my lord.”
“Did anyone ever mention what she looked like?”
Collins furrowed his brow. “Red hair, rather buxom.”
Percy’s heart thumped, because that fit the description of Elsie Terry. “Why did she leave?”
Collins shocked Percy by barking out a laugh. “The duke brought her there to irritate your mother, but your mother spiked his guns by befriending the girl at once. They were fast friends at the end of a twelvemonth, and when the duke caught on, he made her go. To hear the older servants speak of it, by the time your mother was done with her, she was as much a partisan of the duchess as you or I.”
“Well, how the devil did it never come up between them that Elsie Terry had married my father?”
“She didwhat?” Collins gasped.
“Goodness, have I finally succeeded in shocking you? Yes, a good year and a half before the duke purported to marry my mother, and she—or somebody who knows her well enough to be in on the secret—is blackmailing Marian and me.”
“But she apparently doted on your mother,” Collins said.
“Well, she did wait until my mother was dead. And she is, lawfully, the Duchess of Clare.”
“Oh dear,” Collins said, blanching.
“I really ought to have broken it to you more carefully. Here,” he said, directing Collins to a chair. “Sit down and I’ll send for some brandy.” He clapped Collins on the shoulder and pulled the cord to summon a servant. “I ought to see my father,” he said, and departed.
The only light in the duke’s chambers came from a branch of candles at the bedside. The physician left after bowing to Percy and telling him a number of things that all amounted to the duke’s imminent death.
Percy stood at the head of the bed. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said, taking the book from his pocket. “But I suspect that you’ve left me with enough to destroy the Talbot namefor generations. Well, to be fair, you destroyed it with a clandestine marriage and a lifetime of bigamy, but let’s not get mired in details.” Percy opened the Bible to the list of names on its flyleaf, then flipped through the pages of apparently random circlings and underscores. “What I have here is a list of Jacobite supporters. I suspect that the rest of the book contains the particulars—amounts of money, promises made, and so forth. That’s all entirely in keeping with my mother’s priorities, and I suppose the only question is whether the evidence in this book involves past treason or a future plot. But what can you have been up to? I doubt you’ve become a Jacobite. I can only imagine that you were using this book either to blackmail the people listed on the first page or to otherwise bend them to your will.”
Percy didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he thought his father’s eyes flickered. “The question is, what shall I do with it? I suppose I could carry on blackmailing people and then use that money to pay my own blackmailer, and we’d have an entirely blackmail-based economy. I must confess that doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Alternatively, I could give this book to His Majesty and see what the Crown’s gratitude will do for me. If I also hand over the key to this code—and, Father, I know where it is—I bet I could get a title of my very own. Not a dukedom, but something that my descendants could build up into a suitably impressive legacy.”
The duke’s mouth opened and closed, and Percy thought he was trying to talk. Percy found he didn’t care. He didn’t care about what might be his father’s dying words. On his list of things that mattered to him, this ranked far below Marian’s whereabouts and the question of what to do with the book. Possibly lower than whether Balius needed to be reshod.
“Or I could throw the book into the river. I could live my own life, not one either of my parents wished for me. You shot me,” Percy said. “And I was hardly even surprised. I robbed you at gunpoint and never had a single qualm about extorting funds from you. I don’t want to be that person.” As he spoke the words, he realized that he didn’t want to be the person his mother had shaped him into or the person his father wished he were. He didn’t want any part of their expectations.
Percy’s eyes prickled and he cursed himself. But he wasn’t grieving his father’s imminent death so much as he was sad about not having anything to grieve.
The next morning, he woke to the news that the duke had died.
Chapter48
Kit returned to a coffeehouse that remained relentlessly normal, frustratingly unchanged. The seats were filled with the usual patrons, who demanded their usual drinks and had the usual conversations. The weather continued to slink from a damp and foggy autumn toward a dismally cold winter. His leg was as uncooperative as ever. Betty was her typical self, even if she directed glances toward Kit that seemed to go right through him.
Throughout the day, every time a man in a wig and a fine coat walked in the door, Kit’s heart gave an extra beat, even though he knew Percy would be busy doing whatever men did when their friends shot their fathers after holdups gone wrong. Kit frankly couldn’t imagine what that entailed, but he wished Percy would come by and tell him. He wanted to know that Percy would ever come back and would continue to come back. It seemed a small thing to ask for, an almost pitifully modest bit of reassurance.
They had parted on less-than-ideal terms at the gates of Cheveril Castle. Throughout the interminable stagecoach journey back to London, Kit wished his parting words to Percy had been about how much he thought what they had between them wasworth keeping rather than a rant about the evils of the landowning classes.
But the truth was that what they had between them wasn’t worth keeping if Percy didn’t understand that the things he valued—the things whose loss he felt as a calamity—were terrible and dangerous, both to Kit and to everyone who lived under the thumb of people like Percy’s father. If Percy didn’t understand that, then maybe he shouldn’t come back.
When Kit looked around his shop, it felt empty and dull without Percy. He tried to remind himself that Percy had never belonged there, just as he had never belonged anywhere near Kit. Kit had known that all along, even if he had lost sight of that fact somewhere along the way.
