The Queer Principles of Kit Webb - Cat Sebastian Page 0,1

subjects were not, after all, the Duchess of Clare and the future tenth Duke of Clare. Instead, they were plain Marian Hayes and Edward Percy Talbot—well, Edward Percy, he supposed, which was his mother’s maiden name. His mother’s only name. It was a small mercy she hadn’t lived to see this. She’d have murdered the duke in his bed, without a single compunction, despite how immeasurably vulgar it would have been to be hanged as a common murderess.

“I think you have the wrong man,” Percy told Marian when they were seated in the temporary studio the portraitist had set up in Clare House.

“He’s the right man,” Marian said. “My informant was quite certain.”

Percy placed the fact that Marian had people she referred to as informants into the growing pile of things that would not have made the least bit of sense a mere month earlier. “He’s not a”—Percy lowered his voice so the portraitist, situated a few feet away behind his easel, wouldn’t overhear—“a highwayman. He’s a shopkeeper. And just about the most boring man I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

As far as Percy could tell, Webb seldom left the premises of his coffeehouse. He lived upstairs and worked downstairs. The only time he ventured farther than the limits of Russell Street was when he walked the serving girl home after dusk, sometimes stopping on the way back for supper. Webb frequented neither church nor tavern nor anywhere even remotely interesting. Percy had become momentarily intrigued when he realized how often Webb went to the baths, but the man seemed to spend his time there actually bathing, so Percy resumed being unimpressed.

If Webb had any friends, they came to him, never the other way around. He exchanged pleasantries—if semi-grunted greetings could be considered pleasant—with some of his more regular patrons but left the actual chatter to the tawny-skinned, gap-toothed girl who worked for him. A person less like a dashing highwayman Percy could not even begin to imagine. Percy had hoped that consorting with the criminal classes would at least be interesting, and was quite depressed by the reality.

“That’s him,” Marian said. “The coffeehouse is just a front.”

A front? Percy would very much have liked to know when and where the Duchess of Clare had the opportunity to pick up criminal argot, but before he could open his mouth to ask the question, he noticed that Marian’s maid had looked up from her mending.

The duke, perhaps sensing that Percy and Marian had aligned against him, or perhaps simply because he was committed to sowing unpleasantness everywhere he went, had taken to keeping a hawklike eye on his young wife. At all times she was either in his company or chaperoned by the maid he employed, and it had proven all but impossible for Percy to catch Marian alone for more than a few seconds.

“Your hair is crooked again,” Percy said. “It keeps listing to the side.” Marian had evidently decided that sitting for a portrait required about two pounds of wig powder, not to mention a profusion of feathers; the coiffure probably couldn’t remain upright without the aid of flying buttresses, but Marian could at least put forth some effort.

Percy had, at great expense and personal inconvenience, imported this artist from Venice as a wedding present for Marian and, he supposed, his father. The duke, making his move in the game of chess he and Percy had been playing for years, had that morning declared himself to be too busy to sit for a portrait. Percy decided that he would sit for the portrait alongside Marian. The duke would be painted in later, likely wearing something that clashed grossly with Percy and Marian, spoiling the entire portrait.

Perhaps Percy could spirit the canvas away before his father was added in. How very quickly one could go from being a law-abiding citizen, the scion of a noble family, to consorting with highwaymen and then contemplating stealing one’s own portrait. There was a lesson in there, he supposed, but he preferred not to think about it.

Instead, he allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation for having insisted on the sky-blue satin; it flattered Marian’s complexion while complementing the slightly darker blue of his own coat. The effect was pleasantly harmonious, without making Percy look like a lapdog tied with a ribbon to match his mistress’s costume.

“It’s the latest fashion from Paris,” Marian said, nonetheless raising a hand to straighten her hair.

“It’s nothing of the sort. I’m not going to be immortalized on canvas as Unknown