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We should be so lucky.”
Percy’s only hope was that the French strumpet had managed to die before the duke married Percy’s mother.
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.
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.
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.
So Kit ignored the man, or at least he tried to.
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.
He wore a freshly curled wig that was powdered to the requisite shade of alabaster, generously powdered his face, applied a velvet birthmark over the corner of his mouth, and then added just enough rouge to make it clear that he was wearing it.
It would have been nice to just do one last job. To once more see the look on a gentleman’s face when he realized there were some things out of his control, and to feel, however briefly, the dark satisfaction of revenge. He missed the rest of it, too—the thrill of making an escape, lying low, disposing of their haul.
But most of the time he went home, hauled himself up the stairs, and read by the light of a candle until he fell asleep.
“It’s very inconvenient, you know,” Kit said, the words leaving his mouth before he could think better of it, “not to know with what name to think of you.” “Is it? You must think of me often if that poses such an inconvenience.”
“This isn’t the first time you’ve followed me. Who the hell are you?” Webb demanded.
And if you aren’t going to hit me, will you kindly bugger off, as I believe is the custom in these situations? Not, I hasten to add, that I’ve ever been accosted in an alley or anywhere else before this evening, so my intelligence may be lacking. It’s mainly from the theater,” he added confidentially. “Do you ever shut up?” Kit asked, now fully exasperated.
But now he thought he understood his mother’s motivation—she had probably been trying to improve Percy’s confidence more than his ability to physically defend himself.
Since Percy had never learned to leave well enough alone, he stroked his thumb over the soft inside of Webb’s wrist.
He was sweaty and disheveled and knew he probably smelled like horses. He felt at a decided disadvantage next to Webb, who wore his own buckskins and ill-fitting coat with more grace than Percy thought strictly fair. He even smelled good, somehow, even though the only scent Percy could detect on him was yesterday’s soap, tobacco, and what his mind stupidly and unhelpfully identified as man.
Or is it that knowing my father will suffer is reward enough?” At Webb’s silence, Percy arched an eyebrow. “The latter, then. A man after my own heart.
“Part of it is strategy,” Holland said. “If a decent man hurts you, he feels in your debt. If a cruel man hurts you, he thinks he’s your superior, which makes him underestimate you.”
“I never said you talk too much,” Kit said, taking another biscuit out of the jar and offering it to Holland. “Just that you do talk a lot.”
He had found it surprisingly satisfying to put Percy to bed, to know he was keeping Percy safe. It had been a long time since Kit had taken care of anyone, since anybody had needed him, and he found that he missed it.
I’ve never seen you with your hair down, he had said, as if Percy had been keeping a secret from him. He took the tie out of his hair. Then he put it back again. There was vanity, and then there was lunacy.
Maybe, if he were honest, he had this reaction to everything Percy wore.
Some days, instead of directly taking a seat, Percy would saunter over to the counter, steal whatever pastries Kit had on offer that day, and strike up a conversation as Kit stoked the fire and stirred the pot. Perhaps conversation was overstating the matter: what he actually did was cast a relentless barrage of insults at Kit.
They had been looking at one another for weeks—Percy shamelessly, and Kit at first reluctantly but now hungrily, avidly, as if there were no sight in the world quite as worth looking at as Percy.
“An archer?” Percy repeated. “Isn’t that a bit theatrical? Why use a bow and arrow rather than a rifle?” “Better aim. And quieter.”
“Of course you don’t. You just jam the new book in there helter-skelter. I’ve seen the state of your shelves. Sensible people, however, attempt to maintain order.”
Kit gasped, like an idiot, like someone who needed to have the mechanics of kissing and possibly the anatomy of mouths explained to him, maybe with charts.
“I should stop,” Kit said. “You should fuck me,” Percy countered. “You can, you know.”
“I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me gracefully subside. He dishonored Marian and my mother, and he’s raised me to be—to be a lie, Marcus. Marian feels the same way.”
But he also knew that the moral of Scarlett’s story wasn’t that rich men abandon their conquests; it was that when you’re treated badly, you start to believe you don’t deserve any better.
Percy grasped Kit’s arse with his free hand and pulled him close, hoping he’d get the idea. Kit thrust back, groaning and swearing. “Wait,” he said, and turned around so his back was to Percy, his hands braced on the wall. “Fuck me,” he said, his voice raspy and ragged. “Please.”
“I knew you’d be like this.” “Like what?” Percy asked. “Impatient. Talkative. A little mean.” “Christ. And you like that?” Percy asked, the words escaping his lips before he could think better of them. “Something’s very wrong with me.”
“How’s your leg?” “How’s my leg? You’ve just had your cock up my arse and you’re asking about my leg?” “It was meant to be more of a general inquiry as to your state of well-being, but if you wish to give me an itemized list of your body parts and their various conditions, please don’t let me stop you,” Percy offered graciously.
“Are you coming back from the dead to complain that I’m fucking men who aren’t you?” asked Kit in disbelief. “Are you serious, now?”
But if Percy had become upset by being called unimportant, that was everything but an admission that he wanted to be important to Kit. And that thought made Kit’s heart leap with hope. He wanted to find Percy right that minute and apologize, but it would have to wait until his leg settled down.
With that, Percy took a handkerchief from the recesses of his coat and spread it on the ground before dropping to his knees. Kit promptly decided he was very enthusiastic about Percy remaining dressed for this encounter, from the heart-shaped birthmark to the sword at his hip.
Percy drew him deeper then, and Kit watched his length disappear into Percy’s mouth, lovely and obscene and fascinating. Something of that must have shown on his face because Percy gave him a look that somehow managed to be a smirk despite the fact that his mouth was full of Kit’s prick.
“I don’t think I could keep him away from you unless I locked him up. Even then, he’d find a way. And I think you know that.” “Surely, he knows it’s a bad idea, what with his leg.” “Kit does a lot of things that are bad ideas,” Betty said, pointedly flicking her eyes over Percy.
“She’s going to wind up lost in your hair, and that’s no life for an honest spider. I’m going to move her someplace where nobody will bother her and she can eat all the flies and midges she pleases. All right?” When Kit didn’t object, Percy let the spider crawl onto his hand, somehow managing not to faint or shriek while doing so.
“You have it all backward, you great lummox. Now let’s go to sleep before you say anything even stupider.”
“My father used to let me win at chess,” Percy said as Kit ran the sponge over the nape of his neck. “I thought it was because he didn’t want me to feel bad about losing, but then I realized it was because that made the match faster.”
But he realized that Percy was sharing with him one moment of stark disappointment, when a gesture he had thought to be one of love was revealed to be one of indifference.
Look, before I got hurt, I was always either on my feet or on my horse. I’m still figuring out how to be still, how to—how to be me, I suppose, but with a leg that doesn’t work. I’m not there yet.”
“Don’t you see him every time you look at me?” “Yes,” Kit said simply. “Of course I do.” But he didn’t take his arm away, and the fact that he was here despite everything that could have stood between them was more reassuring than any words he could have uttered. “But I also see you,” Kit went on.
He glanced at the bed, then at Kit. “Will you—would you fuck me?” His voice was small, doubtful, the opposite of seductive. “The mattress is very comfortable,” he added, because he was thoroughly committed to being a moron.
Kit grinned, but he knew Percy was right. Maybe Kit hadn’t thought his own pleasure should matter. Maybe Kit had only thought it was all right to risk his neck when it was for somebody else’s benefit—or somebody else’s punishment.
“You think that being with me is worth the risk?” Kit heard the uncertainty in the other man’s voice, and it broke his heart. “You’re worth any price I could pay,” he said, and then kissed him.
Kit carried on disappointing him until Percy reached down and stroked himself until he came, whispering Kit’s name, digging his fingernails into Kit’s shoulders, and Kit tumbled over the edge after him.
encompassing the castle, the garden, the grounds. “You shouldn’t need to hear about the destruction of a village a stone’s throw from your home, the story of a man you’ve gone to bed with, a baby whose grave you saw. I don’t care about your staircase and your gardens. They’re beautiful, but they aren’t worth the price, and I don’t want to know anyone who thinks they are.”
Kit wished his parting words to Percy had been about how much he thought what they had between them was worth keeping rather than a rant about the evils of the landowning classes.
