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“I don’t sulk,” Kit said, depressed by the realization that contemplating a return to crime had put him in a sunny mood.
A lesser man might find yellow breeches to be a bridge too far, but Percy was not a lesser man.
until he found himself in the sort of neighborhood where every old lady sold gin out of her front window.
Percy had never in his life done anything to make anyone think he might be interested in going to bed with a woman.
lol
“Don’t lie,” Betty said. “You’re so bad at it, I feel embarrassed for you.”
love her lol
“I think not,” Holland said. “I will not tussle on the floor with a woman.” “Good luck getting me to the floor,” Betty said, kicking off her shoes.
queen
If Percy were honest with himself, easy peacetime delights sounded grand. He’d much rather be planning a garden party than a felony.
Kit’s heart, frankly, needed to sod off.
He looked disheveled and badly shaven and as if he hadn’t run a comb through his hair since God was a boy.
new favorite phrase
Was there such a thing as an affectionate glare?
yes.
All he knew was that he liked Percy’s hand on him, and that this was a complication neither of them needed.
Good God,” he said to Marian, glancing up, “one knows things are bad when one’s blackmailer sympathizes.
Kit could have identified Percy by his eyelashes alone, which was a lowering thought.
he’s down bad lol
as if there were no sight in the world quite as worth looking at as Percy.
Percy couldn’t remember the last time anybody had looked at him like he was something special, something precious.
ow <3
“You have a spider the size of a duck egg living in your stairwell. I thought you’d feel quite at home.”
We are in a stage comedy, Collins, and I’m afraid you got dragged into it.”
poor Collins lol
“It has been my honor to work for his lordship since he was seventeen. His lordship is not subtle in certain circumstances.”
HA
he found that having thrown out a good number of his principles and reorganized the remaining ones, it was getting easier and easier to make room for new ideas.
if insults and flirtation weren’t synonymous for Percy, then Kit was very much at sea.
“I seldom go to bed with people because I seldom meet anyone I really want to go to bed with. The fact that he’s a man isn’t what matters.”
demi rep?
A month ago, he couldn’t think about his injury without feeling as if he had lost a part of himself. But now he was starting to feel like he was still Kit Webb, just with a leg that didn’t work.
Rob was up to something, which was pretty much his permanent condition,
Kit didn’t know how to explain that Percy seemed to occupy the foremost portion of his brain, nor did he know exactly when that had happened.
“Hardened criminal sounds like someone who goes around frightening old ladies, when really you’re just a darling.”
absolutely true
“You can’t stop me, you know,” Kit said. “I’ll care about you as much as I please.”
Then he murmured something that looked awfully like “beg pardon” to the spider.
i love him
When haven’t we been willing to complicate our lives for one another? That’s how friendship works.”
Percy gave him as incredulous a look as a man could deliver with bubbles all over his head.
Kit found himself wanting to be there when Percy figured it out, when he learned what he was worth.
he didn’t think he had ever been so fond of anyone in his entire life as he was of Kit at that moment.
Percy mounted Balius, who was still visibly indignant about having traveled nearly fifty miles to sleep in a shed.
Whatever they had between them, for all its confusion, was good, and it was theirs, and they should take it. Fuck anything that said otherwise.
“You’re worth any price I could pay,” he said, and then kissed him.
<333
“He was raised in the lap of equine luxury and has been quite at sixes and sevens without a steady supply of apples and other treats.
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.”
I suppose I could carry on blackmailing people and then use that money to pay my own blackmailer, and we’d have an entirely blackmail-based economy.
In a world that was teeming with unfairness, Kit wanted to be a hand on the scale of justice, or maybe he wanted to tear the scales down.
“It’s a swordstick.
YES finally! been waiting since page 1 for a swordstick
I swear upon everything holy, Christopher, if you don’t stop waving that thing about like a May Day streamer, I’ll take it away from you and bestow it upon someone more deserving. Do not tempt me.”
Kit stared at him. “You’ve gone daft.” “I love you.” “Like I said.”
<3
in the world as Kit saw it, getting supper and committing felonies and attempting to dismantle ancestral power were all equally probable events. That struck Percy as about right.
You should see how he’s been pining. It’s scaring away the customers.” “Christ on a cross, Betty, go away,” Kit said, his cheeks heating.
Now he was jaded enough to know that most people never knew what it was like to take a walk side by side with the person they liked best in the world.
I’m afraid I’ve put myself in a position where I owe Collins so many favors that I simply must do as he says.”
Love, while a fine thing, might be little more than an accident. It was what came next that mattered.
He had begun to imagine what his life could look like now, and how it might be a life he could share. He imagined two houses close enough that traffic through the alley behind them might not attract notice, whatever the hour. He imagined shared meals, shared time, coffee cups migrating from one building to the other.
this is so sweet
“I find that I have nobody to oblige but myself,” Percy said. “Nobody to please but myself. But I want to please you. Of all the choices that I never thought I’d get to make, that’s the one I want the most, Kit. If you’ll have me.”
He was being maudlin. Soft. And he reveled in the freedom to be that way.
This was what he wanted—the chance to be known for the worst of what he was and to be held dear anyway, the ability to trust a person as more than an ally.
