it a look later on.”
He passed her the bag in which he had stowed all the teaspoons and other knickknacks that Marian had evidently taken to pinching. Percy decided that Marian turning thief was not even on the list of the ten most troubling things he was contending with at the moment, and therefore he was not going to worry about it at all.
“You know,” Betty said, glancing in the bag, “you’re plainly up to no good, and I don’t usually hold that against a man, but if you hurt Kit, I’ll come after you. You hear me?”
“I never doubted it for a minute,” Percy said. “Speaking of which, Kit seems to think he’s coming with me on the, ah, errand I’m running. Do you think you could persuade him to stay in London?”
“I don’t think I could keep him away from you unless I locked him up. Even then, he’d find a way. And I think you know that.”
“Surely, he knows it’s a bad idea, what with his leg.”
“Kit does a lot of things that are bad ideas,” Betty said, pointedly flicking her eyes over Percy.
“Seriously, Betty, he listens to you.”
“That’s right. He does. And so should you. When the pair of you are done with this job, let him be. He deserves better. There’s more to him than you know, and he’s had enough misery in his life without you adding to it.”
“I see,” Percy said, because while he didn’t care for being ordered about, he also couldn’t disagree with anything that Betty said.
Betty looked like she was about to say something, but then something over Percy’s shoulder caught her eye. “Well, I’ll be fucked,” she said.
Percy turned and saw a woman enter the shop. She wore a cloak of black velvet and had unpowdered red hair. At first, he thought he was looking at Flora Jennings, so strong was the resemblance, but then realized this woman was several years older, at least forty.
“And who would that be?” Percy asked. “Does Kit have a policy of only allowing women into the shop if they have red hair?”
“That’s Scarlett,” Betty said. And then, when Percy snorted in disbelief, she added, “Obviously it’s not her real name, but she’s Mistress Scarlett, you know?”
“Ah.”
“And she’s also—”
Betty was interrupted by the entrance of Rob from somewhere else in the building. He strode over to Scarlett and embraced her, all but lifting her off the ground. “Mother, darling,” he said.
“She’s Rob’s mother?” Percy asked, astonished. “Which means that Flora is his sister?”
Betty gave him an appraising look. “I’m not sure about that. It could just be an uncanny likeness.”
Percy regarded the pair and tried to recall Flora’s face. Rob and Scarlett didn’t resemble one another terribly, apart from the red hair and a suggestion of sharpness about the jaw and cheekbones. Flora, in fact, looked more like Scarlett than Rob did. Rob looked more like— Percy tilted his head and searched his memory, but couldn’t quite arrive at the resemblance.
Through the general din and clatter of the shop, Percy heard a heavy, uneven tread on the stairs and automatically turned his head in time to see Kit duck underneath the spider web. Percy had watched that blasted thing grow to shocking proportions in the past few weeks, and he would have taken it upon himself to dispose of it if not for the fact that Kit seemed to like it there. This time part of the web caught in Kit’s hair—which, given the state of Kit’s hair, was hardly surprising—and Kit carefully disentangled it. Then he murmured something that looked awfully like “beg pardon” to the spider.
Percy stared, some combination of emotions he preferred not to identify roiling in his heart. Then he crossed the room. “You’re an industrious little monster,” he told the spider. The spider did something ghastly with one of her neatly wrapped trophies. Percy decided not to think about that, either. “You wove a pretty web, but you are not in the least bit practically minded. One relates. This is a terrible place for your home, however lovely I’m certain it is.” He reached his hand up toward the creature.
“What are you doing?” Kit asked, sounding irate.
“She’s going to wind up lost in your hair, and that’s no life for an honest spider. I’m going to move her someplace where nobody will bother her and she can eat all the flies and midges she pleases. All right?” When Kit didn’t object, Percy let the spider crawl onto his hand,