The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,48

jerkin and buckskins of their backroom sparring, but in a brown suit of clothes not unlike Kit’s own.

He wore his hair unpowdered, and Kit caught himself staring more than he cared to admit. Worse still was Percy’s sixth sense for knowing when he was being watched. He kept catching Kit out, and then Kit would have to either hastily look away or endure Percy’s smug little smile. None of it stopped him from looking again a few minutes later.

Kit found himself anticipating the moment when Percy would walk through the door. There was always a moment when Percy would scan the room until he found Kit, and then something curious would pass over his face, as if he were as glad to see Kit as Kit was to see him, and also as perplexed by this as Kit was.

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. He complained about the temperature of the coffee, the missing third volume of Tom Jones, the inadequate number of currants in the bun he was eating, and various failures of Kit’s grooming.

“How do you do it?” Percy asked one day.

“Do what?” Kit grumbled, trying not to look too excited about it.

“I’ve never seen you clean-shaven, but your beard never progresses beyond a sort of dirty-looking stubble. It ought to be halfway to your knees by now.”

The truth was that he shaved on Sundays, a day the shop was closed. The truth was also that he used to shave much more often, but then he noticed what happened when he stroked his jaw, rubbing the pads of his fingers over his stubble: Percy’s gaze dropped, his lips parted, and his studied leer became something a little bit raw.

That was the sum total of their relationship: insults, fistfights, and sometimes, rarely, when they were both too tired to move, a tentative conversation.

Then, when Percy left, Kit would spread out maps of the roads between London and Cheveril Castle, trying to remember every convenient bend of the road and useful pothole, every inn and innkeeper, planning how and where they would ultimately do this job.

Flora’s presence was harder to explain. If she hadn’t caught herself a patron after the first few days, then why bother continuing to fish in a stream that hadn’t so far yielded any results? When he asked Scarlett as much, she told him plainly to mind his own business.

Day after day she sat in the window, sometimes reading her Bible, sometimes embroidering. More than once she showed Percy her handiwork. Kit assumed that Flora was attempting to catch Percy’s eye: he was the son of a duke and a man whose mistress would, presumably, be well compensated. Even though Percy didn’t wear fine clothes or announce himself as Lord Holland, Scarlett knew the truth, and she might certainly have told the girl to go after him. That had to be the case, because otherwise Kit was hard-pressed to explain either Flora’s presence in the shop or her attempts to get Percy to notice her.

“Are we doing any work today?” Betty asked, walking past him with a stack of empty cups. “Or are we lounging around and staring at customers? Just let me know.”

He heard the dishes land with a clatter in the scullery sink. “It seems that we’re dashing crockery to pieces,” he called.

When she emerged, she leaned in close to his shoulders and spoke in a whisper he could hardly make out over the din of the room. “Are you going to actually teach that lad to hold up his da’s carriage or are you just going to keep rolling around with him on the floor?”

“You’re full of questions today,” he observed. “What a treat you are to be around.” She was right, though. Percy was perfectly competent with his fists by now and had managed to disarm not only Kit but also the errand boy. It was time to take this project to the next stage.

The problem was that the next step was complicated. He’d ordinarily go on horseback, but so far he hadn’t gone on more than short, slow rides. Hampstead Heath was five miles away. The alternative was a carriage, but that posed the problem of finding a place to