The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

by Cat Sebastian

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.

Hot

“I’m going to tell you a story. There’s a man who is, shall we say . . .”—he drummed his fingers on the table—“a stunning piece of shit. I could enumerate his misdeeds, but you have a business to run and my shoes aren’t meant for standing around in. Suffice it to say, he’s a negligent landowner and in general a brute.”

He took extra care with his toilette. It was a bleak and dismal day, so he chose yellow. It was not, he would concede, his best color, but one of the many advantages of beauty was that he could wear the ugliest conceivable color and still look better than almost everybody. He had Collins button him into his jonquil silk waistcoat and the saffron-colored coat that was positively stiff with gold embroidery. A lesser man might find yellow breeches to be a bridge too far, but Percy was not a lesser man.

He sailed into the coffeehouse with the maximum possible to-do

“All right, you lot. Somebody’s been scribbling Tory nonsense on the privy walls.” Every eye in the room was on Webb, as if he were a magnet. He wasn’t even raising his voice above his usual scratchy growl. “You want to write Tory slogans, you do at it the coffeehouse across the way with the rest of the Tory scum.” As Webb spoke, he looked at his audience, and his gaze caught on Percy, and Percy knew he had been recognized. “Here, we serve Whigs and radicals.”

Percy deliberately got to his feet and stretched, and out of the corner of his eye saw Webb’s hand still as he measured out ground coffee. He crossed the room to the bookshelves and looked for the second volume of Tom Jones. As the books were arranged with no regard to title, author, size, color, or any other quality Percy could determine, this took quite a while, and if he shifted his hips and stretched his arms over his head and in general posed like a bawd in the window of a cathouse, that was hardly his fault, now, was it.

Kit, arriving at the bakery as soon as they unlocked their doors, had picked out the cake that seemed the most unnecessarily complicated. The baker’s sleepy daughter had informed Kit that this cake had orange peel, rosewater, and a number of spices. It cost twice as much as the other similarly sized cakes. Kit knew at once that it would be Percy’s favorite.

Percy was somehow still young or naive enough to think that there was any difference between being strong and acting strong.