The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Read online

  Epigraph

  Since laws were made for every degree,

  To curb vice in others, as well as me,

  I wonder we han’t better company,

  Upon Tyburn Tree;

  But gold from law can take out the sting,

  And if rich men like us were to swing,

  ’Twould thin the land, such numbers to string,

  Upon Tyburn Tree.

  —John Gay, The Beggars’ Opera, 1728

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Epilogue

  Announcement

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Cat Sebastian

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  November 1751

  Kit Webb had principles. He was certain of it. Even at his worst, which had reliably been found at the bottom of a bottle, he hadn’t hurt anyone, at least not too badly. Well, at least not on purpose. Better, perhaps, to say that he never threw the first punch. As far as daggers and pistols, he found waving them about to be so effective that he never needed to resort to using them. Better not to dwell on whether this owed more to luck than to any skill or moral refinement on his part.

  Yes, he had lightened a few purses in his day, but nobody whose purse wasn’t altogether too heavy to begin with. He wasn’t going to keep himself up at night worrying about what some or another lady was going to do with one fewer ruby diadem. Besides, that diadem had been murder to fence, nearly put him off the entire enterprise of jewel theft altogether. Betty hadn’t spoken to him for weeks. He much preferred coin, please and thank you.

  He did feel badly about the coachmen and outriders and other fools who got dragged into fights that were, properly, between Kit and the great and good of the land. But he figured that any poor sod who was fool enough to come between a highwayman and a gilt-encrusted traveling coach got whatever they had coming to them. Which, as it turned out, tended to be nothing more than a couple of well-placed punches.

  But that was all in the past now anyway. He had turned over a new leaf, started fresh—or as close to fresh as a man could when he was nearly thirty and all his acquaintances were criminals and the back room of his place of business was little more than a house of assignation. As close to starting fresh as a man could get when three times a day some bastard walked past the coffeehouse singing that bloody fucking ballad about that one time he had escaped from prison—yes, the escape had been dashing but it wasn’t even in the top 10 percent of his most impressive feats, and it was a sin and a shame that jail rhymed with so many words. Besides, his shoulder still hurt from where he had injured it in squeezing through the barred window, and the less said about the gunshot wound that had been allowed to fester during his week in prison, the better. And that ill-fated escape had followed hard upon Rob’s death, which was not the sort of thing he wanted to be reminded of in lazily rhymed couplets.

  No, he probably didn’t have principles at all, sorry to say. But he could act like he did. In fact, he had to act like it, seeing as how with his leg in this state he could hardly continue to merrily thieve his way across England. He was the very model of what the preacher in Hyde Park was pleased to call A Virtuous Life and the boredom of it would probably kill him.

  For twelve months now Kit had lived the life of an honest and respectable shopkeeper. He turned his attention to running the coffeehouse, which he had bought some years ago on a drunken whim and then operated as little more than a convenient staging ground, a literal den of thieves. But these days, when a customer came in with a purse full of gold and a head full of cotton wool, they left with both head and purse intact.

  And if the past year of trying to live a decent sort of life had only resulted in Kit getting more foul tempered by the day, it was probably his own fault for being so very bad at being good. He had to try harder, that was all. Still, sometimes after walking Betty home after closing up at night, he almost wished footpads would come after him. He’d leap at the flimsiest excuse to fight back.

  Maybe that was why when something that looked like first-rate trouble walked into Kit’s coffeehouse, Kit felt like a bloodhound who had finally scented its quarry.

  Chapter 2

  For the rest of his life, Percy would associate the smell of oil paint with criminal conspiracy. It was fitting, he thought, that these meetings at which he and Marian plotted together would be preserved forever on canvas, displayed in the portrait gallery at Cheveril Castle.

  Except—of course that wouldn’t happen. This portrait would never be hung in the Cheveril Castle portrait gallery, because its subjects were not, after all, the Duchess of Clare and the future tenth Duke of Clare. Instead, they were plain Marian Hayes and Edward Percy Talbot—well, Edward Percy, he supposed, which was his mother’s maiden name. His mother’s only name. It was a small mercy she hadn’t lived to see this. She’d have murdered the duke in his bed, without a single compunction, despite how immeasurably vulgar it would have been to be hanged as a common murderess.

  “I think you have the wrong man,” Percy told Marian when they were seated in the temporary studio the portraitist had set up in Clare House.

  “He’s the right man,” Marian said. “My informant was quite certain.”

  Percy placed the fact that Marian had people she referred to as informants into the growing pile of things that would not have made the least bit of sense a mere month earlier. “He’s not a”—Percy lowered his voice so the portraitist, situated a few feet away behind his easel, wouldn’t overhear—“a highwayman. He’s a shopkeeper. And just about the most boring man I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  As far as Percy could tell, Webb seldom left the premises of his coffeehouse. He lived upstairs and worked downstairs. The only time he ventured farther than the limits of Russell Street was when he walked the serving girl home after dusk, sometimes stopping on the way back for supper. Webb frequented neither church nor tavern nor anywhere even remotely interesting. Percy had become momentarily intrigued when he realized how often Webb went to the baths, but the man seemed to spend his time there actually bathing, so Percy resumed being unimpressed.

  If Webb had any friends, they came to him, never the other way around. He exchanged pleasantries—if semi-grunted greetings
could be considered pleasant—with some of his more regular patrons but left the actual chatter to the tawny-skinned, gap-toothed girl who worked for him. A person less like a dashing highwayman Percy could not even begin to imagine. Percy had hoped that consorting with the criminal classes would at least be interesting, and was quite depressed by the reality.

  “That’s him,” Marian said. “The coffeehouse is just a front.”

  A front? Percy would very much have liked to know when and where the Duchess of Clare had the opportunity to pick up criminal argot, but before he could open his mouth to ask the question, he noticed that Marian’s maid had looked up from her mending.

  The duke, perhaps sensing that Percy and Marian had aligned against him, or perhaps simply because he was committed to sowing unpleasantness everywhere he went, had taken to keeping a hawklike eye on his young wife. At all times she was either in his company or chaperoned by the maid he employed, and it had proven all but impossible for Percy to catch Marian alone for more than a few seconds.

  “Your hair is crooked again,” Percy said. “It keeps listing to the side.” Marian had evidently decided that sitting for a portrait required about two pounds of wig powder, not to mention a profusion of feathers; the coiffure probably couldn’t remain upright without the aid of flying buttresses, but Marian could at least put forth some effort.

  Percy had, at great expense and personal inconvenience, imported this artist from Venice as a wedding present for Marian and, he supposed, his father. The duke, making his move in the game of chess he and Percy had been playing for years, had that morning declared himself to be too busy to sit for a portrait. Percy decided that he would sit for the portrait alongside Marian. The duke would be painted in later, likely wearing something that clashed grossly with Percy and Marian, spoiling the entire portrait.

  Perhaps Percy could spirit the canvas away before his father was added in. How very quickly one could go from being a law-abiding citizen, the scion of a noble family, to consorting with highwaymen and then contemplating stealing one’s own portrait. There was a lesson in there, he supposed, but he preferred not to think about it.

  Instead, he allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation for having insisted on the sky-blue satin; it flattered Marian’s complexion while complementing the slightly darker blue of his own coat. The effect was pleasantly harmonious, without making Percy look like a lapdog tied with a ribbon to match his mistress’s costume.

  “It’s the latest fashion from Paris,” Marian said, nonetheless raising a hand to straighten her hair.

  “It’s nothing of the sort. I’m not going to be immortalized on canvas as Unknown Gentleman and Lady with Crooked Periwig.”

  “Dearest, if you think we’re going to be remembered by posterity for our coiffures, you really haven’t been paying attention. We should be so lucky.”

  “Your coiffure,” Percy corrected, although Marian was quite right. “Speak for yourself. My periwig is unexceptionable.”

  Percy kept an eye on Marian’s maid, waiting until she appeared bored by the conversation and returned her attention to the hem she was mending. “Your highwayman is crippled,” he murmured. “He uses a cane.”

  “Hmm,” Marian hummed. “They don’t mention that in any of the broadsides or ballads.”

  “Probably because it’s a new injury, which would also explain his retirement. He can’t possibly be capable of much in the way of robbery with a limp like that. We need someone else.”

  “We don’t have anyone else,” she snapped. “It was hard enough to turn up the name and address of one highwayman. For heaven’s sake, Percy. We don’t have that much time. Go back and get another name from him.”

  She was right, of course. The first letter had arrived a month ago, relating the bare facts of Percy’s father’s bigamy and demanding five hundred pounds before the first of January. Now they were left with a scant two months to come up with a plan. “Can you get rid of everyone so we can speak privately?” he whispered. “Even if it’s only for a moment?”

  Marian gave an imperceptible nod, then shifted in her seat, moving the doll that served as a placeholder for her daughter from one arm to the other.

  “Your Grace,” the portraitist said, his heavily accented voice carefully polite. “If you could be still, I beg you. The light, it moves. And, Lord Holland, if you could be so kind as to keep your attention on your infant sister, if you please?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” Percy said, playing his role. “First of all, that poppet is—” He broke off with a shudder. Marian had found the godforsaken thing in the attics. What she had been doing in the attics was something Percy strongly preferred not to think about. “I believe repellent is not too strong a word.” The doll’s head was carved from wood and painted with pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a rosebud mouth. Glued to its head were strands of yellow silk embroidery thread, which made Percy think that the ghastly thing had been made to resemble a Talbot for the amusement of some long-dead aunt. But between the combined efforts of damp, time, and quite possibly rats, it was more suited to ritual witchcraft than belonging in a civilized nursery. “The poor thing has either leprosy or an advanced case of the pox.”

  “Don’t listen to him, my darling,” Marian cooed, covering the doll’s moldering ears and pressing a loud kiss to its decayed forehead. Percy wanted to gag.

  “Secondly,” Percy went on, “if I fix my gaze on the doll, it’ll look like I’m staring at the duchess’s bosom.” Marian’s gown revealed an expanse of décolletage the approximate dimensions of a cricket pitch. “And while I daresay it’s a pleasant enough bosom,” Percy went on, “as far as those things go, I’m afraid I’d rather not be accused of leering at my stepmother.”

  “You’ve given me the most brilliant idea,” Marian said in a tone of voice Percy knew from long experience meant nothing but trouble. She tugged down the bodice of her gown and determinedly applied the doll’s head to her exposed breast.

  “Why?” Percy cried, flinging a hand over his eyes. “Put it away!”

  “I feel certain this is what the duke would want,” Marian announced.

  “Nobody wants this!” Percy protested.

  “Like the holy mother,” Marian said grandly. “I’m even wearing blue. Who would you like to be, Percy? I believe Saint Elizabeth is the traditional choice, but a young John the Baptist would be a bold alternative.”

  “You do have a point,” Percy observed. “I’ve seen paintings of the Madonna and child in which our savior is even uglier than that poppet.”

  “That’s Lady Eliza to you,” Marian said, holding the wretched doll up as if for Percy to make its acquaintance.

  “I feel certain this is blasphemous,” Percy remarked. “Poor Signore Bramante wasn’t expecting to have his principles compromised this afternoon,” he said, indicating the artist.

  “I do beg your pardon,” Marian said, addressing the painter, who, Percy noted, had put down his brush and adopted an expression of mortified suffering, which he directed toward the ceiling, resolutely avoiding Marian’s bosom. “Perhaps we ought to rest now and resume in an hour’s time. Jane, will you fetch some hairpins so we can do something about my hair? No, that’s quite all right, I’ll survive on my own for a few minutes. Hurry, or Signore Bramante’s paints will go dry. Signore, you’ll find cakes in the kitchen.”

  “Nicely done,” Percy said when they were alone. Marian had taken rather frighteningly well to this life of deception and intrigue they were apparently now leading. She had certainly managed it better than Percy, who still expected to wake up and find things restored to the way they were supposed to be.

  “Thank you,” Marian said primly, rearranging her bodice and casting the doll to the floor. “We don’t have more than five minutes before Jane returns.”

  “We need to decide whether we’re going to pay the blackmailer,” Percy said bluntly.

  “I’ve already told you what I think. Paying the blackmailer is letting your father get away
with it. I want to make him suffer,” Marian added with a degree of relish Percy found entirely understandable. “But I’ll go along with paying the blackmailer if that’s what you prefer.”

  What Percy would have preferred was not to have to make this choice. They had spent the past month investigating the blackmailer’s claim. Percy had gone to Boulogne himself and seen the parish register with his own eyes: his father’s name, his father’s unmistakable signature, and a date twelve months before the duke married Percy’s own mother. Marian’s brother tracked down old companions of the duke and plied them with brandy until they admitted to knowing about what they had assumed to be a sham wedding. Percy’s only hope was that the French strumpet had managed to die before the duke married Percy’s mother. The blackmailer insisted that the woman was alive and well, and said he was prepared to prove it as publicly as possible on the first of January. Marian’s brother was trying to track down the woman or her family, but Percy didn’t have much hope he’d turn up a clearly marked grave or a witness to her death.

  That was the crux of the problem: even a whisper of a rumor of his own legitimacy ruined the Clare legacy, and ruined it permanently. It would be passed on to his sons, and their sons, and linger like a miasma over Cheveril Castle for eternity. The more Percy fought, the worse the rumors would be.

  “It would only delay the inevitable,” Percy said. “Unless we mean to burn down this church in Boulogne and murder the blackmailer as well as half my father’s old cronies, we can’t hope to keep it a secret forever.”

  Marian remained silent rather longer than Percy thought it ought to take to agree that murder and arson were undesirable courses of action, however dreadful their present crisis. “That does sound impractical,” she conceded.

  “Instead, if we can get the duke’s book, we can use it to force him to pay us enough to live quite comfortably. Since you have Eliza, he might not cast you off without a penny, but I’m afraid he’ll only too gladly put me out on the street. We need that book for leverage.”

  “And then we let the blackmailer tell the world the truth about what a despicable man your father is,” Marian supplied.