The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,26

he’d never again be able to give a damn for anyone ever again, least of all a child, and certainly not a surly, ill-tempered child, but here they were. He had watched her grow up, and she had seen him at his worst and stuck around anyway. In Rob’s absence, she was his closest friend, and even before Rob disappeared, Betty had been indispensable. He didn’t have any illusions about this indispensability going both ways: Betty didn’t need anyone. When her father died, she had quietly taken over the family business and was, in Kit’s professional opinion, the best fence in London. She could get a good price for anything and make sure it was never traced back to its original owner. The only thing Kit contributed was the coffeehouse, which provided a convenient meeting place with the people she called her customers.

If this robbery was going to cause a rift with Betty, he needed to do something to reassure her. He couldn’t and wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to get revenge against Clare, but he could keep his involvement as minimal as possible. He could plan the thing at arm’s length. After all, planning had always been his particular talent, a well-organized plan being nine-tenths of a successful robbery, and the other tenth consisting of sheer bravado, a bit of luck, and a cheerful willingness to stare down the barrel of a pistol. And gin, probably, but Kit could do without that, especially if—

“Betty,” he said as the plan coalesced in his mind. “Sit down.” He pulled out a chair for her.

“Some of us have work to do,” she said, evidently determined to sulk for the rest of the day. “It’s past nine, and you’ll have people at the door soon. You might want to, oh, I don’t know, brew some coffee.”

“They can wait,” he said. “Come. Sit down. I have a plan.”

Chapter 14

Percy thumbed through the invitations that sat on his writing desk. It seemed his return to England had not gone entirely unnoticed, despite his best intentions.

When Marian had sprung the news of his father’s bigamy on him, Percy had been in England for a matter of hours. He had hardly had time to get used to being home, after an absence of over two years, before he was uprooted again, this time a distance further than the span of the channel.

All the invitations were addressed to Lord Holland, and he—Edward Percy, or whoever he was—had no claim on them. He had no claim to the company of the friends with whom he used to visit gaming halls and pleasure gardens. He had no claim on any aspect of the life he had once lived as Lord Holland, and he had too much pride to help himself to something that wasn’t rightly his.

He supposed an entirely different sort of man might have counted on the support of his friends, might have assumed they would stand by him regardless of his changed circumstances. But Percy knew that if one of his friends had turned out to be the subject of a scandal and the fodder for gossip the likes of which England hadn’t seen in a generation, Percy would have bitterly resented the man for bringing Percy’s name into association with his own. As a matter of dignity, he couldn’t expect more from his former friends than he would have given them himself.

And so he found himself at something of a loose end, loath to spend any more time in Clare House than strictly necessary but without anywhere else to go or anyone to see.

He dressed in his plainest clothes and set off on foot in the direction of Webb’s, for lack of anything better to do—not because he was beginning to enjoy the place, not because he found himself at the end of the first volume of Tom Jones and eager to begin the next. Almost as an afterthought, he recalled that it had been a few days since the punching incident, and Webb might be ready to accept his proposition.

On his way, he passed a boisterous throng surrounding a raised platform in Covent Garden and slowed his pace. Amid the shouts of the crowd and the jingle of coin he heard another, infinitely more intriguing sound: the clatter of blade upon blade.

Percy’s hand went to his hip, in an almost longing reach for a weapon that wasn’t there. Since returning to England, he had yearned for a chance to fence. Ordinarily, he sparred with those of