He was interrupted by the sound of Flora delicately clearing her throat. Now, why had Scarlett sent this girl to him? She had boys she used as couriers. There was no reason to send one of her prettiest and greenest girls out on an errand, unattended. Except—of course. The whole point of this was to display Flora in front of as many men as possible. Scarlett was all but having an auction.
“We’re putting our best merchandise in the shop window today, are we?” Kit murmured. In answer, Flora ducked her head and looked up with a sly wink. Well, she was in on it, then, and that put his mind at ease. “I’m meant to walk you home, aren’t I?” Scarlett would know that Kit would never let this girl out into the street on her own. While he thought it more than likely that she could take care of herself, walking her home was a small enough favor.
“If you please, sir,” she answered. “But you needn’t do so until you’re ready to close up the shop. I have a book to occupy myself.”
“Of course you do,” he said. “Take a seat and I’ll bring you coffee and some cake.”
He watched as she sat near the window, where she would be seen by everybody walking past and everybody within. When he brought her coffee and a plate of seedcakes, he huffed out a laugh when he realized that the book she had brought with her was the Bible. He couldn’t help but grin. He hoped she landed herself a lord and took him for every penny she could.
He was still smiling when he heard footsteps approach the table where he brewed the coffee. Looking up, he saw a now-familiar wigged head and powdered face. The theme of the day, he noticed, was rose: rose silk waistcoat, rose ribbon at the nape of his neck, and he knew that if he looked down, he’d see stockings with rose clocks adorning the sides. He was predictable, orderly, this man who had taken the decidedly outlandish step of attempting to hire a highwayman to rob his father.
Only when he saw Percy’s mouth quirk up at the sides into a grin matching his own did Kit realize he was still smiling like a fool. He also remembered that Percy wasn’t Percy at all.
“You lied about your name,” Kit said, pointing a finger at the other man’s rose-clad chest.
“Did I?” the man asked. “I can’t recall.” He spoke the words as if he were sharing a private joke, rather than defending an accusation of lying. Kit had the strangest wish to be in on the jest, to know what had stolen away the man’s arrogance and replaced it with a smile that managed to be both wry and soft.
“Why are you here?” Kit asked.
“So suspicious, Mr. Webb. I’ve become rather fond of your coffee. Isn’t that reason enough to visit your establishment?”
“It’s very inconvenient, you know,” Kit said, the words leaving his mouth before he could think better of it, “not to know with what name to think of you.”
“Is it? You must think of me often if that poses such an inconvenience.” His arrogance was back in force now, written in the lift of his eyebrow and the way he leaned forward toward Kit, his hands on the table, pushing into Kit’s space ever so slightly. Kit didn’t lean away—this was his coffeehouse and he had all the power in this situation, no matter how he felt. But he could smell lavender and powder, could see that the man’s eyes were the dark gray of wet cobblestones, could tell that the patch he had affixed over his lip wasn’t a circle, as Kit had assumed, but rather a tiny heart. It was, perhaps, the heart that did Kit in—the utter ridiculousness of a heart-shaped fake birthmark ought to have made Kit loathe the man but it achieved quite a different result.
It was too much to hope that Percy (Kit had resigned himself to thinking of him as Percy, as the alternative was a mysterious blankness that posed the danger of becoming as peculiarly compelling as every other detail about the man, whereas Percy was a very boring and ordinary name) hadn’t noticed Kit’s reaction. “I knew it,” Percy said, leaning forward even further. Kit still refused to retreat, telling himself that it was because he would not cede a single inch of ground, but even as he formulated the thought, he knew it to be a lie.
“I don’t do that,” Kit said, because, evidently, he was an idiot.
“Do what, Mr. Webb? I hadn’t realized we had reached that stage of the proceedings.”
“Uh,” Kit said, eloquently. “I don’t—”
“But you want to,” Percy said, undeterred and unabashed. He helped himself to a seedcake from the basket that Kit had forgotten to put away. He took a small bite, chewed thoughtfully, and then brought a lace-trimmed handkerchief to his mouth. “Quite good. Why haven’t I had any cakes on my previous visits? I spent hours here without seeing so much as a crumb.”
Kit snatched the basket away and put it under the table. “I save them for the customers I like.”
“I think I’m shaping up to be your favorite customer ever,” Percy said, leaning close and taking another bite of cake. A crumb lingered on the swell of his lower lip, and Kit couldn’t tear his gaze from it. When Percy swiped the crumb away with one flick of his pink tongue, Kit thought his heart might stop.
“What’s your name?” Kit asked in a desperate bid to regain control of this conversation. “The truth this time.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” Percy said, looking genuinely remorseful, which Kit could not begin to make sense of. “Sorrier than you can know.” He was whispering now, his words little more than a breath on Kit’s cheek. Kit could have turned his head an inch to the left and—and kissed him, he would have thought if he were having an even somewhat normal reaction, if wanting to kiss strange men in broad daylight in a crowded coffeehouse could be considered in any way normal. But no, Kit’s impulses were entirely run to mayhem, so what he actually imagined was running his teeth over the black velvet of that stupid heart-shaped patch. He was manifestly losing his mind.
Kit was usually very good at controlling this sort of urge. Hopping into bed with attractive strangers had never appealed to him very much anyway. It always seemed like a lot of hassle and risk for pleasure that never quite lived up to one’s expectations. And that was with women; with men, things were even more complicated because a heaping great dose of danger was thrown into the bargain. And while Kit was far from averse to danger, he didn’t want it in his bed. The fact was that he was spoiled by knowing what it was like to love someone and be loved in return; he knew what it felt like to want to be with someone in bed but also build a future with them. Anything other than that seemed too dismal to consider.
Although, strictly speaking, he still wasn’t considering it. What he had in mind didn’t involve any bed at all, just this counter and a bit of ingenuity. It would be easy—all he had to do was clear the shop, bolt the door, and draw the curtains. Percy seemed like he’d be game—had spent the last fortnight making as much clear to anyone with eyes and ears. Now his lips were parted, and at this close distance Kit could see his pulse coming hot and fast beneath the lace of his collar.
“Pardon me, Mr. Webb,” said a small voice. Kit looked up to see Flora holding a coffee cup in one hand and her Bible in the other. “May I trouble you for a cloth? I’m afraid I spilled my coffee all over the table and now the book is quite soaked. It was my mother’s,” she said, opening the sodden flyleaf to expose a page of smeared ink. There were tears in her eyes, and her voice had a dangerous wobble.