The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,42

his bedchamber, where he found Collins waiting with a tricorn hat in his outstretched hand.

“Thank you,” Percy said, grabbing the hat and pulling it low over his brow.

“I thought my lord would wish to wear a hat that complemented none of his other garments, so as to keep with the theme of discordance,” Collins intoned.

“Yes, yes,” Percy called over his shoulder as he left. “Thank you!”

He went to Kit’s on foot, avoiding the main thoroughfares, and arrived an hour before the shop was due to close. He seated himself at the end of the long table he had come to think of as his own. It was Kit who spotted him first, and Percy had the satisfaction of watching Kit scan the room, pass over Percy, and then dart back to him, studying his face, dropping lower over the rest of him.

He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, aware that its color and lack of powder made it conspicuous, and also aware that Kit was watching him.

Betty was on the other side of the shop, so Percy assumed he’d have a while to wait for his coffee. But Kit brought a cup after only a few minutes, placing it on the table without any audible resentment.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” Kit said. “You left without a word.”

Percy paused with the coffee cup halfway to his mouth. He hadn’t thought the circumstances warranted a formal leave-taking. He had woken up on Kit’s floor, covered by a blanket, a pillow somehow having found its way under his throbbing head. Kit himself was asleep in a nearby chair, his head resting on a table atop his folded arms. Percy had been badly hungover and even more badly embarrassed.

Percy didn’t get drunk. He certainly didn’t drunkenly call on people. That was not only beneath his dignity, it was vastly imprudent.

But he had shown up here, and Kit had listened to him ramble and then put him to bed right in front of the hearth.

Percy wasn’t sure whether to apologize or to leave. Or, maybe, to hide under the table until he was certain he could fight off the blush that threatened to creep up his cheeks. One of the many advantages of face powder was that it concealed his lamentable tendency to blush.

He swallowed. “If today is a bad day for a lesson, I’ll come back another time.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Assuming your offer still stands.” He dabbed at his mouth with his handkerchief. “Why do you not have proper table linens? All the better coffeehouses have serviettes and tablecloths.”

“Odd that you think I give a damn about running a coffeehouse for people who want tablecloths.”

“How silly of me,” Percy conceded. “What can I have been thinking. I hadn’t realized that wiping one’s mouth on one’s sleeve was something radicals enjoyed.”

A moment passed during which all Percy could hear was the din of conversation and the rattle of cups in saucers, and somehow, over all of it, the pointless pounding of his heart.

“Are you always like this?” Kit asked.

“That depends on what you mean by this,” Percy said.

“Fucking difficult,” Kit said so promptly that Percy forgot himself and glanced up at him. He looked disheveled and badly shaven and as if he hadn’t run a comb through his hair since God was a boy. In other words, he looked as he always did. And he was glaring down at Percy, if glaring could be accomplished without any malice. Was there such a thing as an affectionate glare? Percy found that he very much hoped so, because Percy was an idiot.

“In that case I certainly am always like this,” Percy said as snappishly as he could in the circumstances, which probably wasn’t very snappish at all. “Except for when I’m worse,” he added.

“Drink your coffee and then come along,” Kit said.

“I beg your pardon?” Percy hadn’t come all this way, hadn’t ransacked the attics and given his valet nightmares, just to be thrown out on his ear.

“Drink your coffee,” Kit repeated slowly, “and then go to the back room.”

“There’s still an hour until you close,” Percy said.

“Betty will work the shop.”

Which had to mean that Percy wouldn’t be fighting Betty, which in turn meant that Kit had listened to Percy’s objections and taken them seriously. “Oh,” Percy said, and drank his coffee as slowly as possible so as not to seem too eager.

Chapter 21

Kit couldn’t stop staring. It was a blasted waistcoat, or at least something along those