Page 73 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
“Badly, I expect.”
“Well, I suppose we have a few weeks left before we need to worry about that. I’ll be quite sufficiently busy ruining the estate and so forth. Speaking of which, I ought to warn you. For the next fortnight, you’re going to hear people refer to me by my father’s title. No, don’t lower your blade, Kit, for heaven’s sake. The blackmailer said he’d give us until January first, and I intend to use all that time to—well, you’ll see. No sense in being tedious about administrative details with you. What matters is that on the thirty-first of December I’ll make the information about my father’s marriage public. I swear upon everything holy, Christopher, if you don’t stop waving that thing about like a May Day streamer, I’ll take it away from you and bestow it upon someone more deserving. Do not tempt me.”
“Why bother?” Kit asked. “With your father dead and the estate in your hands, you could afford to pay off the blackmailer as long as you pleased.”
“Paying off blackmailers does not appeal to me,” Percy saidprimly. “I’ve known that from the start. But it turns out that being the Duke of Clare does not appeal to me, either.”
“Is that so,” Kit said.
“There are choices a commoner can make,” Percy said, looking Kit hard in the eye.
“That’s a fact.” The gift of the swordstick made sense now. Not only was a sharp blade Percy’s idea of a lover’s gift, but it was a gift that put them on an equal footing. Kit had always enjoyed the democratizing effect of a weapon in his hand, although that was usually in quite another context.
“Oh, you approve, do you?” Percy’s effort at sardonic archness instead landed somewhere near giddily thrilled. He let his guard down on his right side, just the slightest bit. If Kit hadn’t spent a month sparring with him, then he might not have noticed, but it was enough for Kit to advance on him.
“That’s right, I do,” Kit said, pressing forward. “And you’re glad about it.”
“Lamentably accurate,” Percy sighed, and took a step back, then another. Kit pressed forward again, then dropped his sword, deciding that he didn’t much care for the idea of a sharpened blade too close to Percy. It landed on the floor with a clatter.
“Now I’m going to have to sharpen it,” complained Percy as his back met the wall.
Kit took hold of the wrist of Percy’s sword hand and turned it, pressing the blunt edge of the practice sword against Percy’s neck. “You just wanted me to shove you up against the wall,” he growled. “You shouldn’t let me win.”
“Can’t blame a man for trying,” said Percy, sounding abominably pleased with himself. He was short of breath, and Kit knew it wasn’t from exertion.
“I wonder what I’ll do with you,” Kit said, casting Percy’s sword to the floor and crowding against Percy. Only when their chests were pressed against one another did Kit bring a hand up to Percy’s jaw, angling his mouth for a kiss. He took his time about it, sliding a leg in between Percy’s, then tucking a hair behind Percy’s ear, before finally closing the gap and kissing him. Percy was soft and pliant, the way he rarely was. He opened his mouth against Kit’s as if he had been waiting for that kiss all day or even longer.
Kit couldn’t have said how long they stayed like that, sharing kisses that were long and slow and only a little heated. “When do you have to go?” Kit finally asked.
“I don’t, actually,” Percy said, sounding the slightest bit shy about it. “I told my valet not to wait up.”
“Stay,” Kit said.
Chapter49
Percy couldn’t help but feel a little smug about finally seeing Kit’s bedroom after spending hours downstairs nearly every day for a month and even seeing the office a few times. He could tell from Kit’s awkwardness that he rarely, if ever, let anyone enter it. He nervously pointed out things like the ewer and the window, as if Percy were unfamiliar with ewers and windows. Finally, Percy had taken pity on him and hauled him down to the bed, slowly stripping him of his clothes and showing him how glad he was to be there.
“So,” Kit said later on, his hand carding through Percy’s hair. “What are your big plans for defrauding the estate?” Kit’s bed was barely wide enough for two people, but it didn’t matter because they were all tangled together, Percy’s head on Kit’s arm, Percy’s knee over Kit’s leg, a warm quilt tucked around them both.
“You’ll see,” Percy said. He didn’t want to tell Kit yet, because he didn’t want to sound like he was asking for credit for good intentions. Only if he were successful with his schemes did he want Kit to know.
“What does Marian think about it?”
“I wish I knew,” Percy said. “I haven’t seen her since the robbery. Neither has her brother. I’m rather worried.” In truth, he was more than a little worried. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d have already started a full-blown search, but these were far from ordinary circumstances, and there was a good chance she had reasons of her own for lying low. He didn’t very much like to think about what those reasons might be.
“I haven’t heard from Rob, either,” Kit said, his hand stilling in Percy’s hair.
That did very little to settle Percy’s mind, and from the way Kit’s body had gone tense beside him, he thought Kit might be harboring similar suspicions. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Kit. “You said that you grew up together in Oxfordshire. Is that where Rob’s mother is from?”
“Scarlett? No. She got in trouble, then sent Rob out to be fostered in the country. I don’t think she ever laid eyes on him until we came to London ten years ago, and by then he was grown.”
“Who was his father?”
Kit raised his eyebrows. “A customer, I imagine.”
“But wouldn’t it take a good deal of money to send a child out to be fostered for such a long period of time?”
“I think Rob’s parents—the ones who raised him—thought of themselves as having adopted him.”
