loyalty would be to Rob, not to Percy. Percy knew this, knew better than to assume otherwise. Never in his life would Percy have valued a mere lover—not even that, just someone who had fucked him in a seedy back room—over one of his inner circle. He was being childish and naive to expect Kit to behave differently.
“No,” Kit said, his gaze horribly soft, as if he knew something of Percy’s thoughts. He reached out as if to touch Percy’s shoulder reassuringly, God help them both, but then pulled back. “Not yet, I mean. He doesn’t know your father is our mark, but he’ll have to know in order to do the job.”
“All right,” Percy said. “You mentioned that you already engaged the other people who I require?” They had discussed a sharpshooter and another man to actually hold the carriage up alongside Percy.
“A girl named Hattie Jenkins will be our sharpshooter. As for the other man, I’ve decided that I’ll do it myself.”
“But you can’t,” Percy said immediately, then regretted it when Kit clenched his jaw. “We both know you wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough, if it came to that.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“You can’t know that.”
“You don’t get to make choices for me,” Kit said, his voice low and dangerous for reasons that Percy did not understand. “I’m not in your pay or your service.”
“Of course you aren’t! This was supposed to be my job,” Percy protested. “When I tried to hire you, you wouldn’t do it! That was the point of our entire arrangement.”
Kit looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he just shook his head. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. Let’s just say that I want to satisfy myself that the job is done right.”
“About that,” Percy cut in. “You’ve never told me what makes you so eager to see my father’s downfall.”
“That makes two of us.”
Well, of course Percy hadn’t. He could hardly go around blabbing about his own illegitimacy. And yet—in a few short days, he and Marian would see that it became common knowledge. The only risk in telling Kit now was that Percy had not yet told another soul about his predicament and did not wish to start. He wanted to take his secret—the one that exposed every facet of his existence as a fiction—and bury it under layers of tissue paper, the way Collins had packed all Percy’s most fragile treasures before taking them off to be sold.
But Kit was looking at him, something hard in his eyes that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. Percy shouldn’t give a fig what was or wasn’t in Kit’s eyes, or in anyone else’s eyes, for that matter.
Every day is market day for secrets, his mother had always said. Secrets could be traded for favors, for countenance, for trust. Secrets could be kept for the same price.
Sometimes one shared a secret so it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. Sometimes one shared a secret to take away a bit of its power. Maybe that was what Percy would be doing if he told Kit about his father.
But secrets could also be shared to show that one trusted the recipient. Here, hold this, I know you won’t break it, his mother had said when handing him a delicate glass bauble. And Percy had remained so still that he had forgotten to breathe.
“My father’s marriage to my mother was invalid,” Percy said, “because he was already married at the time. Someone who knows about this is blackmailing Marian. You see what this means,” Percy said, aware he was rambling and unable to stop, because that would mean looking at Kit’s face. “I’m illegitimate and so is Marian’s daughter. I’m not particularly concerned about myself, beyond the loss of my name, my station, and my fortune, but I can’t forgive my father for doing this to Marian. That’s why I need the book—we’re going to ransom it until my father pays enough for Marian and the baby and me to live on.”
Kit remained utterly still, leaning against the door as he had since entering the room. “Beyond your name, station, and fortune,” he echoed. “Mere trifles.”
“Don’t pretend you care about dukedoms and estates.”
“I don’t,” Kit said promptly. “I do care that you’ve lost things that matter to you.”
“Things you hate.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to pity me.”
“I don’t. I couldn’t.” Kit managed to deliver these last words without any trace of affection, which Percy didn’t think he could see without feeling