The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

by Cat Sebastian

Kit had seen the Duke of Clare only once, when he had sentenced Jenny. At the time, Kit had thought he had the man’s appearance seared into his memory, but now he could hardly conjure up a picture of the man. When Holland had said who his father was, though, Kit had seen traces of the duke on his son’s face. They had the same cold eyes, the same aquiline nose, the same air of a man used to moving through a world without obstacles. Unchecked power gave a man a certain look; it set him apart from normal people. Something terrible was unleashed when a person knew that not only could he tear down homes, take away a family’s livelihood, and send people to the far corners of the earth, but he would be praised for it. There were rich men who didn’t use their money and power as cudgels, but they still always knew that they had a cudgel ready at hand. They got so used to it, they probably thought they were doing a grand thing by not wielding it. And Kit hated them all for it. People might say that what he really hated was the system that put too much power in too few hands. But Kit knew he also hated the men. That hatred had been the engine of his life for the better part of a decade, and at the center of it was the Duke of Clare.