The Queer Principles of Kit Webb Read online

  Percy swallowed. “I think, rather, we ought to tell the world ourselves. That way we stay in control.” The idea of bringing about their own ruin was terrifying but so much better than living a lifetime in fear of having the truth exposed. “Does that sound agreeable?” he asked, as if proposing a promenade rather than a farewell to everything they had ever known.

  Marian narrowed her eyes. “I plan to drain the estate of every penny we can. And, Percy,” she added, “I’m going to see your father brought as low as humanly possible. When he married me, he made a bargain. I kept my end, but he didn’t keep his. I will not be cheated, Percy.”

  He took one of her hands. Neither of them were particularly affectionate by nature, but she squeezed his hand with both of hers. It was the first time since returning to England that he had truly seen a trace of his childhood playmate. When he left for the Continent, she had still been barely out of pinafores, and now she was coiffed and powdered and the mother to his three-month-old sister; she had become as cold and shrewd as all the duchesses of Clare who had preceded her.

  Sometimes he wondered exactly how his father had managed to convince Marian to marry him. The union had been presented to him as a fait accompli, the news arriving at Percy’s lodgings in Florence troublingly soon after the news of his mother’s death. It plainly wasn’t a love match. Marian remained tight-lipped on the subject, and Percy and his father were hardly on cordial enough terms for such a conversation.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, pitching his voice as gently as he could.

  She shook her head, and before he could say anything else, Marian’s maid returned, and they let go of one another’s hands.

  Chapter 3

  All sorts of people came to Kit’s. That was the point of the place, the point of coffeehouses in general. Ink-stained Grub Street hacks could get out of their cramped hired rooms, shopkeepers could pretend to be intellectuals, and well-shod gentlemen could get their hands dirty—but not too dirty.

  What Kit sold was the fiction of democracy, accompanied by the aroma of coffee and tobacco and the company of a pretty serving girl. An afternoon in a coffeehouse was a chance for everyone to pretend the rules were less important than conversation. It was Twelfth Night, it was Carnival, but it took place in broad daylight, with everybody involved dead sober and wide-awake, with newspapers and hot drinks to lend everything the faint sheen of respectability.

  Still, they didn’t get too many gentlemen like the one Kit noticed in the corner. He was wigged and powdered, a birthmark too dark to be real affixed above one lip. Even from across the room, Kit could tell that the man’s coat—wool of a violet so dark it was nearly blue, adorned with gold braid and brass buttons—must have cost a small fortune. The buttons alone would be worth nicking, as would the expanse of lace that spilled over the man’s wrists. He had one leg crossed over the other, revealing, beneath the hem of his violet knee breeches, thin stockings of the palest lavender, embellished with a pattern of white flowers that crept up the side of his calf. On his feet he wore shiny black shoes with silver buckles and a small but obvious heel. At his hip he wore one of those shiny, ornamental swords that gentlemen insisted on swanning about with.

  The man didn’t have a newspaper open before him, nor a book, nor even a broadside. Apart from his cup of coffee—untouched, Kit noticed—his table was empty. Instead of sitting at the long table at the center of the room, which was where most unaccompanied patrons chose to sit, this man lounged at one of the smaller tables that lined the walls. It was off to the side but not in the shadows. It was almost as if he wanted to be looked at. It stood to reason, Kit supposed—one didn’t wear purple coats or high-heeled shoes if one wished to remain unobtrusive.

  Odder still, the man wasn’t talking or reading or taking snuff. He wasn’t even drinking his coffee. Instead, he was doing one thing, and he was doing it incessantly—he was watching Kit.

  “Don’t look now,” he murmured to Betty the next time she came out from the kitchen, “but the man at table four is up to something.”

  She took her tray and made a circuit of the room, removing empty cups and exchanging remarks with a handful of regular patrons. “I could snatch his watch, his handkerchief, and his coin purse before he even reached the door,” she said when she returned. “Not that I will. Keep your hair on, I know the rules,” she added hastily and with audible regret. “My point is that the poor lamb’s about to have a very bad day. As soon as he steps one pretty foot outside, somebody’ll lighten his pockets. Maybe even before then, if I know Johnny Fowler.”

  They both cast a sideways glance at Fowler, who was indeed watching the gentleman almost as intently—but more covertly—than the gentleman was watching Kit. Fowler’s mouth was practically watering. Kit sighed: he doubted Fowler would manage to wait until the gentleman crossed the threshold.

  That was another thing coffeehouses were good for; an observant pickpocket could browse patrons for a likely target, follow them outside, and ply their craft. Hell, that was why Kit had thought to buy a coffeehouse in the first place—after spending hundreds of hours and countless pounds in such establishments, he figured he might as well try life on the opposite side of the till. And now it turned out operating a coffeehouse of his own was one of the few types of work—honest or otherwise—that he was fit for.

  “But what’s he doing?” Kit asked. “The gentleman, not Fowler. Why is he here? Gentlemen usually come in groups of twos or threes, not on their own.”

  “Maybe he’s looking to pick somebody else’s pocket,” Betty said.

  “Maybe,” Kit mused. This man wouldn’t be the first thief who dressed as a gentleman in order to throw off suspicion. He wouldn’t even be the first thief to actually be a gentleman. “But he’s only looking at me, not the room.”

  “You sure you don’t know him?”

  Kit raised his eyebrows at her. “I think I’d remember meeting the likes of that.”

  He chanced another look at the man. Kit was good at remembering faces—he had to be, both in his present line of work and his former one. And he knew he had never seen that man before. Beneath the powder, the man’s face was unremarkable—straight nose, a jaw that was neither weak nor strong, eyes of some color that was neither dark nor light. His eyebrows were a pale wheat, meaning that the hair beneath his wig was likely even lighter. It was hard to tell, what with all the stuff he had on his face, but he was probably not an unpleasant-looking man. Maybe even handsome, in a bland sort of way.

  With the powder, patch, and rouge, not to mention that very stupid wig and a frankly unethical quantity of purple silk, though, he was exquisite. There was, unfortunately, no other word that did the man justice. Kit found it hard to look away. Within an hour of the man’s arrival, he could have described the precise number and variation of flowers on the bastard’s stockings.

  There was always the possibility that he knew who Kit was, but Kit had covered up his tracks pretty well. Only a handful of people knew Kit in both his identities, and nearly all of those were past confederates in whose interest it was that Kit never be exposed. Still, he had always suspected that revenge would come to find him one day, but he hadn’t expected it to arrive in a purple coat and with lavender ribbons in its wig.

  But no, this man wasn’t looking at Kit with anything like malice. If anything, he looked . . . curious. Maybe even appreciative. Kit was just letting his imagination get the better of him.

  So Kit ignored the man, or at least he tried to. He filled and refilled the kettles that hung over the hearth. The sun began to set behind the gray stone buildings across the street. The patrons at the long central table gradually filtered out and were replaced by new customers. Kit brewed pot after pot of coffee, and whenever he looked out of the corner of his eye, he saw dark velvet, a shiny shoe, and a pair of keen eyes.

  His mind, he decided, had been finally driven over the brink by too much boredom, and now it looked for intrigue where in reality there was only a reaso
nably attractive man paying him too much attention.

  Finally, Kit left Betty to manage the shop and stomped upstairs to punish himself by balancing the books.

  He always left the door to his office not only unlocked but open. Across the landing, the door to his bedchamber was fastened by a heavy bolt, but he wanted Betty to be able to reach him—and his dagger, his pistol, and the rest of the modest arsenal he kept about his person—with a single shout. He also wanted to be able to hear the hum of voices from down below. He wanted to hear the clatter of cups, the sound of chair legs scraping across the wood floor, all almost loud enough to drown out the sounds of the street outside his window. Anything was better than silence.

  And in through that unlocked door walked the powdered, beribboned gentleman.

  Kit didn’t say anything, nor did he get to his feet. It would be not only useless, but an admission that he didn’t have the upper hand, if he asked what this man thought he was doing. Instead, he calmly rested his dagger on the table before him, his hand relaxed on the hilt. For some reason, the sight of this made the stranger break into a broad, slow smile, revealing a row of small white teeth that transformed what might have been a pleasant face into something altogether vulpine.

  “Oh, marvelous,” the stranger said. “Really, well done. You are Kit Webb, are you not? Short for Christopher, middle name Richard, alias Gladhand Jack?” He pulled a chair out from the wall and brought it to face Kit’s desk, and then he sat, one leg delicately crossed over the other as he had done downstairs. That surprised Kit, even more than the fact that this man knew who Kit was. This man was rendering himself vulnerable, open to any attack Kit might choose to make, and surely he knew that Kit had every motive to attack him. “I’m Edward Percy.”

  At the name, Kit’s fingers involuntarily closed around the hilt of his dagger. Not because he recognized it, but because he didn’t. He had never had any dealings with a man of that name, and if this stranger were acquainted with a friend of Kit’s, he would have led with that information. Instead, he had announced that he knew exactly who Kit was and what Kit had done. Briefly Kit considered telling this Percy that he had the wrong man. But this stranger knew. Kit could see it in his eyes. Somehow—and Kit would dearly like to know who had informed on him—Percy had found out, and denying the truth would only make getting rid of him more tedious.

  Percy’s gaze traveled to Kit’s hand, still wrapped around the hilt of the weapon, and then back to Kit’s face. Nothing in his posture changed, nothing to indicate that he knew he was in danger, not the slightest trace of fear or even vigilance. That, in Kit’s experience, meant one of two things: either the man was enormously stupid and overconfident, which were certainly common enough traits among the wigged and powdered set, or he thought knowing who Kit really was would be enough to keep him safe, in which case he was very stupid indeed.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Percy?” Kit said, trying to imbue his words with as much boredom as he could, barely bothering to turn his voice up at the end.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Percy said, crossing his legs in the opposite direction. His silver shoe buckle caught a beam of light from Kit’s candle, drawing Kit’s attention to Percy’s ankle. It was thin, almost delicate, and those clocks on his stocking seemed almost to writhe before Kit’s eyes. For one mad moment, he wondered if he might like whatever proposal Percy had to offer, however insulting.

  “Eyes up here, Mr. Webb,” Percy murmured softly, and Kit felt his cheeks heat at having been caught out, but also at the lack of rebuke in the man’s voice. There were times when a lack of rebuke was almost an invitation, certainly a concession, and Kit did not know what to do now that he found himself in one of those situations.

  “You enjoyed looking at me downstairs, too,” Percy went on. And, damn it, Kit knew he ought to have been more discreet. He hoped the dimness of the room concealed his flushed cheeks but had the sense that he was rapidly losing whatever upper hand he might have had at the start of this interview.

  “I wasn’t the only one looking,” Kit replied.

  “Indeed, you were not,” Percy said promptly. “Can you blame me?” He slowly raked his gaze down Kit’s body, and Kit had the inane idea that this man’s penetrating eyes had rendered the heavy oak desk as transparent as glass. “But work before play, Mr. Webb,” he said, a note of arch reprimand in his voice, as if Kit had started this, whatever it was. “Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d like to engage your services.” He paused, as if deliberately giving Kit a chance to get ideas about what those services might be, and whether he would like them. Kit let his thoughts trail down this path for a moment. Patrons were forever attempting to purchase Betty’s favors, so perhaps it wasn’t so very odd for one to attempt to do the same with Kit.

  The fact was that Kit didn’t let himself look at men the way he was looking at Percy, at least not often, and certainly not so obviously as to get caught. He wondered what it was that had tipped his hand to this gentleman. Kit’s closest friends, such as they were, didn’t even know. He had the uncomfortable sense that this man saw everything Kit wished to conceal.

  “I’d like to hire you to remove some papers from the possession of a man of my acquaintance,” Percy said, a trace of laughter in his voice, as if he knew precisely what Kit was thinking and that it wasn’t about stealing papers.

  It took a moment for Kit’s brain to catch up with Percy’s meaning. “No,” he said, any thoughts of well-turned ankles and slender calves evaporating into the air. “I don’t do that.”

  It would have been easy for Percy to point out that Kit didn’t do that anymore. But Kit had already learned that this man never said the obvious thing. Instead, the gentleman nodded. “Quite. I’m hoping you’ll make an exception for the right price.” He uncrossed and recrossed his legs, as if he knew what that did to Kit’s ability to think straight—and he probably did, damn it. “And for the right person,” he added, as if to drive home the point.

  “I said I don’t—”

  “Is it because of your leg? Are you not able to ride?”

  Kit searched the man’s face for a sign of insult or insolence, but found only the same amused curiosity. “I can ride,” he said, which wasn’t quite a lie. He could ride, and he could walk, and he could climb stairs, as long as he didn’t mind pain and if one employed a fairly generous definition of ride, walk, and climb.

  “Interesting. I thought there had to be a reason for a man with your storied past to live the way you do now.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  Percy rose to his feet but didn’t turn toward the door. “Pity,” he said. “Could have been fun. You can’t tell me that a man with your skills and your history is content to stand in one place all day, warm and safe and terribly, terribly bored.” He adjusted the lace at his cuffs. “Could have been quite fun.”

  Kit picked up the knife, allowing its blade to catch the candlelight, so Percy could be under no misapprehension as to what Kit meant. “No,” he repeated, putting his free hand flat on the desk, as if preparing to stand. “Get out.”

  Percy left, and as Kit heard his near-silent progress down the stairs, he wondered how the stranger had known things he had hardly admitted to himself.

  Chapter 4

  Percy certainly hadn’t anticipated using his questionable powers of seduction to persuade the man, but if he could get that book from his father and also get into that highwayman’s breeches, he’d consider it time well spent. Not only did Webb have that jawline and those shoulders, but he spoke with a pleasantly rough growl of a voice. He would probably be as boring in bed as he was out of it, but when a man looked like that, one could lower one’s standards.

  Buoyed along by this pleasant train of thought, he decided to perform a task he had been delaying.

  “The book your father won’t let out of his sight,” Marian had murmured that morning while she and Percy once again sat for their portrait, “is bound in dark green morocco and ha
s faded gold lettering embossed on the cover.”

  Percy’s heart had given a thump, and he’d forced himself to remain very still and very calm so as to conceal any trace of his excitement. “So, it is my mother’s book,” he responded, equally low. Until this point, all Percy had known was that his father was taking great pains to guard and conceal a book he kept about his person at all times. That alone told Percy of the book’s value to the duke. If Percy could steal it, then he could force his father to pay for its return; that was reason enough to want the blasted thing. If the book had been his mother’s, however, that opened up a rather intriguing vista of possibilities.

  Percy remembered his mother removing her little green book from the folds of her gown, sometimes running her finger down a page as if to remind herself of something, other times writing something inside. He had never seen its contents but was certain that she had used the book as a means to amass power, and that his father was now doing the same: gathering and hoarding power was the one thing Percy’s parents had in common.

  Percy had known from his earliest days that his parents were engaged in a protracted domestic war that seemed to have originated some time before their marriage, and over a cause no more complicated than their long-standing hatred for one another. Percy often only learned of the individual skirmishes long after the fact, and from overheard whispers among servants; this was how he learned the duke locked the duchess in her rooms after the duchess caused the duke’s morning chocolate to be laced with what was either an emetic or arsenic, depending on who one believed. It was also how he learned the duke had his mistress housed in the east wing of Cheveril Castle, and also that the duchess, either in retaliation or in provocation, had sold a coronet and used the proceeds to build a Roman Catholic chapel on the grounds of that same estate.