“And you wouldn’t be, my good man. It’s not my book. It’s Kit’s.” Harper gestured at a wall on the far side of the room, lined with bookcases and hardly visible through the tobacco smoke.
“Is Mr. Webb running a lending library as well as a coffeehouse?” Percy asked. The mind boggled at the career choices of retired highwaymen.
“That,” said a man across the table, not looking up from a paper on which he had been furiously scribbling, “would imply that he charged.”
“I do charge!” interjected Webb, who was stomping around the table collecting empty cups.
“No, you don’t,” said the man across the table.
“You’re supposed to put an extra penny in the bowl.”
“Nobody does that,” Harper told Percy in confiding tones. “You just take the book and put it back when you’re done.”
“And put a fucking penny in the bowl,” said Webb. “What are you all still doing here? Don’t you have homes to go to?”
Harper left soon after, shoving the book in front of Percy as he went. Percy ignored it, preferring instead to watch Webb poke at the fire and grumble at the pot of coffee that brewed near the hearth.
Around supper time, the crowd at the coffeehouse began to thin. Percy really ought to be going as well. When he checked his watch, he discovered he had been sitting on a hard wooden bench for three hours. He had read four pages of the novel, idly listened to a debate that sounded shockingly seditious on both sides, and spent the rest of the time watching Webb.
He watched Webb sweep, add what seemed to be utterly indiscriminate and unmeasured quantities of herbs to the coffeepot, pour coffee in a way that could only be described as reluctant, shelve a pile of books in a manner that could have nothing to do with the alphabet, and tell about three dozen patrons that “Betty isn’t here, God damn you, just drink your coffee and get out.”
Percy knew nothing about shop keeping and would have been gravely insulted by anyone who suggested otherwise, but he had spent enough money at enough places to know that Webb’s manner of running his business was both eccentric and not especially likely to encourage customers to return. But still, the place had been full every time Percy had seen it.
Maybe they were all there to admire the proprietor. There was certainly a lot of him to admire. Even his scowl didn’t ruin his looks. He had the jaw to carry it off, making the scowl into a proper manly glower.
Now there were only three people left, including Percy himself, and surely it was past time for Percy to be going. He had only meant to show his face and remind Webb of what fun and intriguing criminous activities he could be engaging in instead of brewing coffee. But somehow he had whiled away the entire afternoon.
One of the remaining patrons got to his feet and made not for the door, but for the stairs. “That garret still empty, Kit?” he called when he was already on the bottom step, so he must have been fairly sure of the answer in advance.
“It’s yours.” Webb glanced up from the counter, where he was counting out the day’s earnings into neat stacks of coins. “Mrs. Kemble is on the floor below, so mind that you tread lightly. You know how she gets.”
That was the most Percy had heard Kit say that day or any other day, and it was the first time he had heard the man speak in anything other than a grumble. He had a nice voice, too—low and a bit rough. His accent was hardly polished, but neither was it rustic. He didn’t sound illiterate, and indeed, now that Percy thought about it, he had seen Webb reading books from his own library. One could put him in a respectable coat, introduce him to the concept of a hairbrush, and scrape off that stubble and he would pass for a prosperous shopkeeper, a respectable member of the middling sort—which was, Percy supposed, exactly what Webb was, felonious past notwithstanding.
“Stop staring at me like that,” Webb said when the two of them were alone in the shop. He didn’t look up from his coins.
“No, I don’t think I shall,” Percy said.
“You’ll get yourself arrested if you carry on acting like that.”
Percy raised his eyebrows. “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to receive counsel on being a law-abiding citizen from you.”
Webb made a noise that it took Percy a moment to realize was a laugh. Webb recovered himself immediately and scowled at Percy, as if he were cross with Percy for being amusing.
“You’re not going to tell me that a man like you minds a brush with the law,” Percy said.
Webb gave him an odd look, but still there were no offended dramatics about him not being that sort of man, how dare Percy, et cetera and so forth. The man wasn’t even blushing.
“Did you take my advice?” Webb asked.
“To stop staring at you?”
Webb looked up, exasperated. “To hire a thief.”
“I already told you why that wouldn’t work.”
“Ah, yes, because your father has guards.”
If Webb thought he could so easily get Percy to admit that his target was his father, he could guess again. “What a fool you must think me to fall for such a trick,” Percy said. “How demoralizing.” He got to his feet and walked out the door, taking the tattered first volume of Tom Jones with him and pointedly dropping a penny into the bowl, feeling Webb’s eyes on him all the while.
Chapter 8
Kit leaned heavily on his cane, looking at the familiar building. The same lace curtains fluttered in the evening air as fiddle music drifted out to the street on a breeze. He thought he might even be able to smell the women’s perfume all the way from the pavements, but that was probably his imagination.
He knocked, and the door was opened by a girl Kit hadn’t seen before. She had red hair and beneath her powder he could see a smattering of freckles on her cheeks.
“Good evening,” she said in what sounded like it was supposed to be a seductive lilt but actually came out with a bit of a nervous stammer. Kit knew the girls who were truly nervous didn’t work the door. This one, with her half-concealed freckles and her shyness and the way she moved a hand to her chest as if in an arrested effort to tug her bodice higher, was there to appeal to the sort of man who wanted to take care of a girl. Scarlett knew what she was doing, and so did this girl. He’d bet that within six months she would be set up in a cozy house by some man who was set on rescuing her. And bully for her. Kit hoped she fleeced the fellow.
“Would you tell your mistress that Kit Webb is here to see her?”
She opened her eyes wide, and he couldn’t tell whether she recognized his name or whether she did that to all the men who called at the house. He took off his hat and she showed him through a series of rooms papered in shades of rose and ivory. They passed a salon in which a handful of men clustered around a woman who played a lively tune on the harpsichord, then a room in which men and women played cards, some of the women perched on the laps of their companions.
At the end of the corridor, the girl gestured to an empty parlor and instructed Kit to wait. He sat near the fire, gingerly lowering himself onto a delicate settee. The furniture on the ground floor of Scarlett’s establishment was all constructed along similar lines—chairs that seemed just a shade too fragile, tables that were maybe half an inch too low, all designed to make men feel like huge strangers in a feminine place. When Kit had first asked Scarlett about it, he had questioned her logic—wouldn’t it make more sense to fill the house with furniture built on a more masculine scale, so as to welcome paying customers? She had simply told him that the beds were sturdy and her pockets were full.