The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,109
and only hoped he didn’t botch it up too badly. “I might be wrong—Christ, I hope I’m wrong—but I think your friend Scarlett is my father’s legal wife. Her daughter has a Bible that’s identical to my mother’s. God knows I wasn’t paying attention when she showed it to me, but I’d wager that it’s even bound in the same green leather.” Percy forced himself to stop and braced himself for Kit’s inevitable protest that Percy was jumping to conclusions, that he had no proof, et cetera.
But Kit remained silent, his hand tracing an absent circle on the side of Percy’s knee. “That fits,” he finally said.
“It does?” Percy asked. “Fits with what?”
“Well, I’ve wondered how Scarlett knew Rob’s foster parents. It’s not the sort of thing you can ask, though, and they didn’t volunteer. But it makes sense. It also fits in with Rob’s disappearance. He was furious with his mother and told me I wouldn’t want to know the truth. I had the impression that his mother had given him bad news. He mentioned that it took him months to decide what to do about it.”
“Evidently, what he decided to do was blackmail Marian and me.” Percy had gone over this in his head a dozen times. At first he thought that Scarlett was blackmailing him herself but couldn’t figure out why she’d do that while also deliberately showing him the Bible. Now he was fairly certain that she and Flora had been subtly trying to sell him the book, which might contain the key to the code his mother had used in her own book. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and Scarlett wanted his Bible—from what Percy understood, she was a woman who would know precisely how to make use of a book of secrets.
“Scarlett was born Elsie Terry,” Kit said.
“And what year was Rob born?” Percy asked faintly.
“He just turned twenty-five, so 1726.”
“Well, that’s him, then.” Percy thought he ought to feel something, anything at this confirmation of his worst fears: Cheveril would go not only to a commoner but to a very, well, common commoner.
“You really could pay him off, you know,” Kit said after a long while. “He might be an arsehole about it and keep coming back for more money, but he doesn’t want to be a duke.”
Percy looked down at Kit and felt a rush of intense affection. Kit hadn’t needed to tell him that, hadn’t needed to make it easy for Percy to slide back into a life Kit hated. It was tempting, truth be told. He could return to the world he had come from as if the past few months had never happened. Surely, Percy could do more good as a wealthy and titled man than he could as a disgraced commoner. He could be a principled duke, one with the highest ideals. He could make good on all his plans and then some.
Or he could do something different. He could be his own man, and do right in his own way. “I find that I don’t want that anymore,” Percy said. It wasn’t entirely true, and from the look Kit shot him, he knew it, too. “What I mean is that I’ve made my choice.”
“Why?”
Percy looked away and fiddled with the hem of the bedsheet. “Do I really have to spell it out for you?”
“If it’s because of”—Kit gestured between their bodies, as if reluctant to say what they were to one another—“then you’ll only wind up resenting me.”
“It’s not,” Percy said. “The fact is that you’ve ruined me for a life of leisure, Kit Webb. How can I go back to all that when the most principled man I know thinks it’s evil.”
Kit stared at him. “You’ve gone daft.”
“I love you.”
“Like I said.”
Percy kissed him, because there was no use arguing with a man so stubborn.
“You all right?” Kit asked after a while.
“Entirely,” Percy said, and it was mostly true. “How about you? You seem remarkably unbothered by everything I’ve told you, I have to say.”
“Of course he did.” Kit captured Percy’s hand and held it. “He doesn’t want to be a duke. But here he is, presented with a chance to make aristocrats miserable while also lining his pockets. Of course he blackmailed you. I’d be shocked to hear he did anything else.”
“Do you know, that’s almost exactly what he said in one of his letters to Marian.”