Page 13 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
“A true shame that my wardrobe couldn’t supply all your needs for outfitting yourself as a housebreaker. To what do I owe the honor?”
“You had a bruise on your face at supper,” she said. “I could hardly ask you about it in front of the duke.”
He frowned, the movement tugging at the injury. Percy didn’t need to ask why Marian had sneaked in through his window instead of knocking at his door or approaching him in the drawing room. The duke was suspicious of all men Marian spoke to, even his own son, despite the fact that Percy had never in his lifedone anything to make anyone think he might be interested in going to bed with a woman. Indeed, during his teenage years, he had been something less than discreet, relying on his name and position to get him out of any trouble he might find himself in. There had been a few boys at school, then the village blacksmith and one of the grooms. And also one of Marian’s grooms. And also Marian’s brother.
“HowisMarcus these days?” Percy asked.
She shot him an exasperated look. “Yes, I tiptoed along a ledge for twenty yards to gossip about Marcus. He’s still in France, trying to find Louise Thierry, or whatever that scribble in the parish register was meant to spell. More to the point, he’s trying to find out if she has a son.” Marian pressed her lips together. “We need to know who will be the next Duke of Clare.”
For a moment, Percy was certain the wind outside stopped blowing, the fire in the hearth stopped crackling, and his own heart stopped beating. Until then, he had assumed that the title and estate would go to a third cousin, a cadet branch of the Talbot family to be sure, and hardly worthy of Percy’s notice, but respectable people. Percy was going to be disinherited, Percy’s mother’s memory and Marian would both be dishonored, and for that his father would pay, but at least Cheveril and the rest of the estate would go to someone who would look after it. The idea that instead it might fall into the hands of a French peasant, the son of some woman his father had taken to a foreign church and secretly wed, probably for no reason other than to smooth his path into her bed—Percy found himself choked with something horribly like grief.
He was dimly aware of Marian speaking. Her lips were moving but he couldn’t make out what she said. Absently he let hishand drop from his face, the raw meat falling to the floor. When he looked at his hand, he saw smears of blood on his fingertips. Then things got hazy, a sort of mist descending on him, and the last thing he was sure of was that he was falling.
When he came to, the first thing he was aware of was acute embarrassment. The second was that his head was in Marian’s lap, her fingers carding through his hair in a manner that was almost gentle and caring. This was so disconcerting that he sat bolt upright.
“Easy,” Marian chided. “I caught you once. The next time you’re on your own.”
“Entirely reasonable,” he managed, his tongue thick and lazy in his mouth.
“I forgot how you used to do that,” Marian said. “Still do, I suppose. Remember when I fell from the apple tree and bloodied my nose? You were out for five full minutes. I thought you had died.”
“You bled all over me!” Percy protested. At the time he had been entirely certain that passing out was the only reasonable course of action when someone had bled all over one’s waistcoat, and he still believed this to be the case.
“I don’t know how you can play around with swords if you faint at the sight of blood.”
“I don’tplay aroundwith swords, and I’m entirely too skilled to let myself be cut to bits, thank you.”
“Shut your eyes so I can wipe the blood from your hands and face,” she said, rising to her feet.
He complied, hearing her soft footsteps cross the room, then the sound of water being poured from an ewer. She took his hand and briskly wiped each finger. “Now your face,” she said. Hetilted his chin up, wincing only slightly as she passed the damp cloth over his jaw. “Now are you going to tell me who hurt you?”
“It was your highwayman.”
“Ah. I take it he won’t be lending us a helpful hand, then?”
“Oh, he’ll be lending us a hand. I guarantee it. Marian, who is he? He did not react well to the sound of my father’s name.” Percy gestured at his bruise.
“I imagine the country, if not the entire hemisphere, is filled with people who become consumed with a murderous rage when they hear of the Duke of Clare.”
“True,” he said. But Marian’s response hadn’t really been an answer to the question he had asked. “Does this man have a special reason to hate the duke?”
“You should ask him,” she said lightly.
That still wasn’t a proper answer. He knew Marian well enough to understand he’d never get any information from her she didn’t choose to divulge, so he let the topic drop. Still, he had the uncomfortable sense that she was playing a deeper game than he was, and was playing for stakes he didn’t yet understand. “Who told you about him? When I left England, you certainly didn’t have any connections to London’s criminal demimonde.”
Her jaw tightened. “A lot happened after you left.” She shook her head briskly, her eyes sparkling with what he at first thought were tears but then recognized as anger. Then she got to her feet, the bloody piece of meat in her hand.
“What are you doing with that thing?” he asked.
“I have an idea,” she said.
Before he could ask what she meant, she stepped out the window. He held his breath as she descended the trellis instead of edging along the ledge back to her room. When her feet hit the ground, the old hound who patrolled the gardens of Clare House came up to her. But before the dog could bark, Marian dropped the meat, then sprinted toward the gate.
Chapter13
“You’re an idiot,” Betty said the next morning when Kit stumbled downstairs, his clothes rumpled and his face unshaven. “I can smell the gin on you from across the room. I hope your head hurts.”
It did, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of his saying so. “Remember the man in the brightly colored coats?” he asked, the sound of his voice ricocheting off the insides of his skull like seeds in a dried-out gourd.
