The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,3

so we can do something about my hair? No, that’s quite all right, I’ll survive on my own for a few minutes. Hurry, or Signore Bramante’s paints will go dry. Signore, you’ll find cakes in the kitchen.”

“Nicely done,” Percy said when they were alone. Marian had taken rather frighteningly well to this life of deception and intrigue they were apparently now leading. She had certainly managed it better than Percy, who still expected to wake up and find things restored to the way they were supposed to be.

“Thank you,” Marian said primly, rearranging her bodice and casting the doll to the floor. “We don’t have more than five minutes before Jane returns.”

“We need to decide whether we’re going to pay the blackmailer,” Percy said bluntly.

“I’ve already told you what I think. Paying the blackmailer is letting your father get away with it. I want to make him suffer,” Marian added with a degree of relish Percy found entirely understandable. “But I’ll go along with paying the blackmailer if that’s what you prefer.”

What Percy would have preferred was not to have to make this choice. They had spent the past month investigating the blackmailer’s claim. Percy had gone to Boulogne himself and seen the parish register with his own eyes: his father’s name, his father’s unmistakable signature, and a date twelve months before the duke married Percy’s own mother. Marian’s brother tracked down old companions of the duke and plied them with brandy until they admitted to knowing about what they had assumed to be a sham wedding. Percy’s only hope was that the French strumpet had managed to die before the duke married Percy’s mother. The blackmailer insisted that the woman was alive and well, and said he was prepared to prove it as publicly as possible on the first of January. Marian’s brother was trying to track down the woman or her family, but Percy didn’t have much hope he’d turn up a clearly marked grave or a witness to her death.

That was the crux of the problem: even a whisper of a rumor of his own legitimacy ruined the Clare legacy, and ruined it permanently. It would be passed on to his sons, and their sons, and linger like a miasma over Cheveril Castle for eternity. The more Percy fought, the worse the rumors would be.

“It would only delay the inevitable,” Percy said. “Unless we mean to burn down this church in Boulogne and murder the blackmailer as well as half my father’s old cronies, we can’t hope to keep it a secret forever.”

Marian remained silent rather longer than Percy thought it ought to take to agree that murder and arson were undesirable courses of action, however dreadful their present crisis. “That does sound impractical,” she conceded.

“Instead, if we can get the duke’s book, we can use it to force him to pay us enough to live quite comfortably. Since you have Eliza, he might not cast you off without a penny, but I’m afraid he’ll only too gladly put me out on the street. We need that book for leverage.”

“And then we let the blackmailer tell the world the truth about what a despicable man your father is,” Marian supplied.

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.