Page 78 of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

As Percy spoke, he pulled the leather cord from Kit’s queue and proceeded to plait Kit’s hair at the nape of his neck. “Would you like to know something exceptionally droll?” Percy asked. “I haven’t stopped being invited to things. If anything, I’m gettingmore invitations than ever, presumably from people with a taste for scandal and disorder. One imagines I’m invited as a spectacle, but I’m invited nonetheless.”

That reminded Kit of something he had been turning over in his mind for the past month. “I wonder,” he said, “if you’d like to help me with a project.”

“Anything,” Percy said.

“I don’t know if Rob got to me or if Betty did or if I’ve just stopped trying to argue with myself. But I loved planning that holdup, Percy. And not just because your father was the target, although that was part of it. God help me, this is probably prideful in a dozen different ways, but I think I can right wrongs. With some information from Scarlett, a proper burglar, a runner, and a fence, I’d have enough to go on. But what I really need is someone to get access to the homes of targets—someone to open a window, leave a door unlocked, draw up the layout of the house.”

“I’d be delighted to turn traitor to my class,” Percy said easily. “Honestly, I’ve been wondering when you’d ask.”

Percy knew he had promised Kit supper, but when Kit came over that night, he found Percy sitting on the bare floor of the empty sitting room, surrounded by yards of sky-blue silk and staring at a framed portrait.

“Did you do this?” Percy asked. He knew it was obvious he had been crying, and he didn’t even care.

Kit knelt beside him. “I thought you might like it, but I’ll take it all away if you don’t.”

“How did you manage it?”

“I very politely explained that you required your bed hangingsand your mother’s portrait, and the housekeeper wrapped them up immediately.”

Percy laughed wetly. “That’s all it took?”

“I reckon you were expecting a daring heist, but I took a gamble that the servants would either be fond of you or... less than fond of your father, and it worked.”

Knowing what Cheveril meant to Kit, Percy could hardly believe that Kit had willingly gone back. He took Kit’s hand and kissed it. He was being maudlin. Soft. And he reveled in the freedom to be that way.

“I don’t have any supper for you,” Percy said. “Because I sent everybody out of the house. Except Eliza, and she’s asleep in her cradle and unlikely to inform on us. And you may visit herlater, Kit. Right now you have other matters to attend to.”

“Is that so,” Kit said, already pushing Percy back into the blue silk.

“I’m prizefighting tomorrow,” Percy said while kissing Kit’s jaw. “Want to watch?”

Kit kissed him hard, as if to show him how much he wanted to watch.

It felt unexpectedly intimate to be together in this narrow little house that was Percy’s in a way no place ever had been, a place he had chosen because he had chosen Kit. He felt exposed, as if all the weakest parts of him were visible for Kit to see. But it was also comforting to know that Kit would guard his weaknesses as fiercely as Percy would, rather than exploit them. Percy knew he would do the same for Kit. This was what he wanted—the chance to be known for the worst of what he was and to be held dear anyway, the ability to trust a person as more than an ally.

He knew he had found that in Kit and would every day try toshow Kit that he had found the same in Percy. And he knew that they had also found other things—a chance to try to make the right choices, a small but sure haven of comfort, hope where they least expected it.

“Where did you go?” Kit asked, looking down at Percy with an expression so hopelessly fond, Percy had to force himself not to shut his eyes.

“I’m right here,” Percy said, and reached up for a kiss.