The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,57

managed to do it without falling on his arse, so he was counting that as yet another victory.

“What we want to do,” Kit said, after the horses were secured, “is find a place where we can see the road but stay hidden. Do you see that bend? That’s bloody perfect. It’s fucking gorgeous.” He grinned at Percy and found the other man looking at him with a slightly dazed expression.

“Gorgeous,” Percy echoed.

“Look at the road, not at me. Listen,” Kit said, as he heard the sounds of approaching hoofbeats. He pulled Percy behind a tree. Percy was wearing clothing that looked almost startlingly normal—no high-necked leather jerkins, no silk coats the color of hothouse flowers—so they’d have some camouflage. During the actual holdup, they’d have to do something about his hair. As it was, it caught too much light.

“Now,” Kit went on, leaning in so his mouth was close to Percy’s ear, “as the carriage rounds the bend, you can see it for a full ten seconds before they see you. That gives you time to get into the road and into position before they can draw weapons. You and whoever we hire—Tom, most likely—will stand in the road. The sniper—I have the name of an archer who does tricks at fairs—”

“An archer?” Percy repeated. “Isn’t that a bit theatrical? Why use a bow and arrow rather than a rifle?”

“Better aim. And quieter.”

“All right,” Percy said doubtfully.

“Anyway, she’ll be in the tree.”

“In the tree?” Percy repeated.

“In a tree, she can hide and also get a clear shot, and if she’s in a good position, she can see down the road in both directions and let you know if another carriage is approaching.” He could see it clearly in his mind and felt his blood sing with anticipation as the carriage approached. “One, two, three, and there. That’s where you step into the road and call out. You and Tom first take the weapons, then the valuables. Half a minute, that’s your goal.”

The carriage rattled along the road, around the bend and out of sight.

“I thought we weren’t going to be shooting at anybody,” said Percy, who was evidently still caught up on the archer.

“She’s insurance.” Percy remained silent. “I told you not to waste my time or your own if you weren’t willing to hurt people,” Kit said.

“I know, I know. I’m just . . . readjusting my principles.”

“You’re doing what, now?”

Percy bit his lip and looked like he was searching for words. Kit had never known the man to have anything less than five dozen words at the tip of his tongue. “Well, before all this started,” he began, and Kit assumed “all this” was whatever had incited him to hire Kit, “I never really thought of myself as a particularly good person or a bad person, but I assumed I had to be at least slightly good. I carried on in the way things were always done. Comme il faut, just like everybody else.” He shot Kit a wry look. “In which ‘everybody else’ is people like me, of course. This was the natural order of things, you understand. One doesn’t steal from one’s father or endanger the lives of coachmen.” He swallowed. “But what I’m doing is right, in its own way, or at least it isn’t wholly wrong. It’s doing right by the people I care about, and if I can manage to pull this off properly, I’ll prevent a good deal of harm.”

Kit watched him. He had rather assumed that Percy’s goal was revenge, which was a good enough reason, as far as Kit cared. But he found that he wasn’t terribly surprised to find that there was more to it.

“In any event,” Percy went on, “what I had thought were principles were merely manners, and they’re utterly insufficient for my present circumstances. I keep running into information that makes me have to sort of reorganize everything in my brain. You know when you get a new book, you have to slide everything on your shelf over to accommodate it?” He seemed to remember who he was talking to and huffed out a laugh. “Of course you don’t. You just jam the new book in there helter-skelter. I’ve seen the state of your shelves. Sensible people, however, attempt to maintain order.”

Kit had the dizzying sense that Percy would get on well with Rob, of all people. They shared the same flexible understanding of right and wrong. Kit had never really questioned that stealing was wrong;