Page 59 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
Kit gestured for him to enter, and Rob sat on the bed beside him and handed him the cup of tea. “Betty made it, so it’s all right.”
“Thanks,” Kit said.
“So,” Rob said. “What do you need me to do to help you with this job?”
Kit didn’t ask whether Rob was agreeing to help as an olive branch to Kit or as a way to ensure Kit didn’t meet any trouble. “Only the usual things. Make sure something happens at the coaching inn to delay any other carriages in the duke’s party—a loose axle or a horse needing to be reshod. Check the carriage for any pistols stowed under the cushions. The drunker you can get the coachmen and any outriders, the better. If they have any weapons, see if you can pinch them. After the duke’s carriage leaves the inn, ride ahead to where Percy and I are waiting.”
“Percy is he now?”
“I’m hardly going to call him Lord Holland.”
“I suppose not,” Rob sighed.
“I know you and Betty think I’m being foolish, but I’veplanned this job as well as I planned any other job. Better, even, because it’s amazing how much more clearly you can think when you aren’t foxed half the time. I’ve spent time in the duke’s stables and know that his horses are skittish and his servants are a close-mouthed group. He’ll travel with his own horses, even though that slows his pace, because he doesn’t trust them to strangers.”
“I only want you to be safe, and the more emotional a job is, the less likely it is to go off without a hitch. You lose your instinct to back off.”
Kit had the distinct impression that Rob was talking about himself. “Are you certain you don’t want to tell me what’s been bothering you?” Kit asked.
“Nothing’s bothering me,” Rob answered.
“I’m not going to pry, but we both know that you haven’t been yourself since you got back. And that’s fine. Obviously, whatever kept you away was serious enough to—well, serious enough to keep you away. But if you want to talk to someone, you know I won’t spill your secrets.” Kit swallowed, suddenly overwhelmed by the sense that he was losing the best friend he had ever had. “I never have, you know.”
“I do. I do know. But I can’t. Trust me when I say that it would complicate your life more than you can even imagine.”
“Even so, Rob. When haven’t we been willing to complicate our lives for one another? That’s how friendship works.” At least, Kit had thought so.
Chapter41
The weather, Percy decided, was suspiciously fine. It was the sort of crisp and clear late autumn day that made summer seem a distant and slightly vulgar memory and the coming winter seem almost implausible. Hardly fifty miles outside London, the fog and smoke were nowhere to be seen in the Oxfordshire countryside.
Truly, Percy could not have chosen more pleasant weather for a highway robbery.
Before leaving, Kit had shown Percy a map, pointing with one callused index finger at a place between Tetsworth and an area simply marked “pasture.”
“See that bend in the road? There’ll be a copse of trees right there,” Kit had said, a glint of excitement in his eyes. “It’s not so different from the place I showed you in Hampstead. Be there at dusk.”
They traveled separately, Kit and the sharpshooter together in a stagecoach, Percy on horseback, and Rob by his own means.
Early in the morning, Percy dressed in his finest riding costume and told Collins not to wait up for him, hoping the valet would interpret this to mean Percy planned a spree ofdebauchery. Then he rode to an inn, bought a round of drinks for the patrons, loudly announced his plan to buy a hunting dog from a man in Kent whose dog had recently given birth to a litter of puppies. That accomplished, he got back on the road in the direction of Oxfordshire, changed into nondescript clothes and removed his wig, and arrived at the designated copse of trees well before dusk and with a horse who had a distinct air of being hard done by.
He had brought with him a loaf of bread and a flask of ale but was too nervous to do more than break off crumbs of crust and roll them between his fingers. He checked the position of the sun in the sky. It was not quite dusk, but it was close, and still there was no sign of Kit.
There was some shameful part of him that hoped Kit and the girl did not turn up. Then Percy wouldn’t have to go through with this.
There was an even more shameful part of him that desperately needed Kit to come, because otherwise Percy would know himself to be abandoned.
Right when he was about to give up deciding which hope was more shameful, he heard soft footsteps and turned to find Kit approaching him. With him was a slight figure in breeches and which Percy would not have guessed to be a girl if Kit hadn’t informed him beforehand.
Percy was certain he had schooled his face into something suitably bland but still Kit greeted him with a long look and a warm hand on his shoulder. Then Kit reached into the satchel that was slung over his shoulder and pulled out Percy’s black prizefighting leathers, which Percy had given him the previous day. “Change,” Kit said.
Percy, spurred more by the vestiges of some old and defunct sense of propriety than by any actual principles, opened his mouth to object on the grounds that a girl was mere yards away. But then he went behind a tree and did as he was told. He plaited his hair and tucked it into one of Kit’s decrepit tricorns, then took the false scar, which was still intact after he had peeled it off the last time, and stuck it to his face.
When he emerged, Kit looked him up and down. “Good,” he said. Then he took a flask from the satchel and handed it to Percy. “Drink.”
“Are we only speaking in monosyllables today?” Percy asked, and only when he had spoken did he realize that those were the first words to have left his mouth since Kit arrived. He opened the flask and sniffed it, dismayed to discover that it contained gin. It was filled to the very top, so he guessed that Kit must not care much for gin, either. He took a sip, and then took another one. When he made to hand it back to Kit, the man shook his head.
“You keep it.”
