Book 859: Subtle Blood (The Will Darling Adventures #3) – K.J. Charles

Now THIS is how you end a series! Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want it to end, especially after reading Charles’ short story “To Trust Man on His Oath” that takes place between this and The Sugared Game. The short story provided Will and Kim the much-needed space to discuss who they are separately and who they think they want to be together.

And, thankfully, I’ll get to visit with Will and Kim one last time when I finally Charles’ short story/epilogue “How Goes the World”. I just need to read Proper English and Think of England first which share a world with The Will Darling Adventures! (Oh no, more books to read :-D)

I adore Kim and Will, even if it took me three books to figure out Will was the one with the knife on the cover, because DUH. For some reason I got it in my head that was Kim because he’s “a bloody twisting slippery weasel liar”, but of course it’s the one who owns a freakin’ knife and they talk about it all the time.

There were a couple of reasons this book was my favorite book, but the primary  was that Kim and Will finally started talking to each other. They finally agreed to be honest with each other and even if they didn’t know where they’d be in the future they’d try to be together no matter what came at them.

Will sat in his bookshop as the evening darkened around him, listening to the faint sounds from Charing Cross, and tried to think about Kim not coming back. About risks that were too great, and threats nobody wanted to live under, and obligations to things he didn’t know how to weigh in the balance, like name and land and family. About the impossibility of it, because it had always been impossible, really. Kim was starlight and privilege; Will had his feet firmly fixed in the mud. They didn’t belong together. Except they did. Kim belonged in this bookshop, leaving everything behind in the smell of paper. Maybe parts of him belonged in a mansion flat too, or a gentleman’s club, or some bloody great estate in East Anglia, but he damn well ought to be in this shop and the bed upstairs, and Will was not going to sit here and watch everything turn to dust around him without making an effort. (69)

And every time they started to have the conversation and Will balked verbally, if not mentally, it made it that much sweater when the final conversation happened and the ending was swoon-worthy. But really, the winner of the conversation was Masie! I was so glad she and Phoebe came back (as lovers no less), so that Maisie could offer this gem to Will:

He’s not asking you to predict where you’ll be in ten years, you idiot. He’s just telling you he wants you to be with him—you, with your grammar school manners and working hands and punching people when you oughtn’t—and asking if you want it too. That’s all a future is. (139)

It was the swift kick in the pants that Will needed to actually have the conversation and then they did and it was just perfect even if it was piecemeal spread out over a few harrowing incidents.

‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘You stayed,’ Kim said.
‘You loved me. You watched me, which obliged me to behave as the man I’d like to be, rather than the less impressive one I often am. I don’t like it when you’re not there either, Will. I’m better with you.’ (231)

Kim turned to glare at him. ‘You can’t swim, and you climbed over the side of a bloody yacht, and it wasn’t even— Jesus Christ, Will! Why would you do that?’
‘You know why.’
Kim shut his eyes. His hand tightened on Will’s. ‘I do, yes. It’s because you’re a sodding lunatic with no sense of self-preservation.’
‘Because I love you. Arsehole.’
‘Which is what I just said.’
‘No, that was why I started seeing you. It’s not why I’m still here.’ (265)

The overall story was take it or leave it for me. I got what I wanted with Kim and Will realizing they love each other and don’t care about society with the icing on the cake that was Maisie and Phoebe 😀 But, it was interesting the resurgence of Zodiac and the new connections made to pull Will and Kim begrudgingly back into the fray. The ending when DS offers both of them a job with the agency was also great, especially Will’s response, and I’m hoping the epilogue is far enough in the future that we get to see a bit of what they’ve done.

Charles’ kept the humor going in this one. There were great quips from Kim and Will at each other, but this one took the cake for the book:

Will explained about selling the Aveston library with a vague feeling of unreality that he was discussing a viscount with an earl’s nephew. Come to that, he’d punched a baronet and fucked a marquess’s son. Talk about the high life. (56)

Especially, because Kim had to interact with his family and Will went with him for better or worse and the book starts off with Will punching some lord or another in the face. It was just perfect and I could see Will brushing off his shoulders or doing a fist pump when he realized this.

Recommendation: What a great way to end the series! I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope that one day Charles will revisit Will and Kim, maybe once they’ve worked together at the agency for a while, I mean there’s still one Zodiac member we know for a fact escaped to the Continent! Will and Kim continued to evolve and it was good to see them taken out of the rough and tumble of London and thrust into Kim’s world of the upper echelons of society. Will did not disappoint! I can’t wait to read the final epilogue Charles just sent out to her newsletter, but have a few more books to go until I can 😀

Opening Line: “Will Darling was selling books.”

Closing Line: “Kim’s hand slid into his. Will gripped it, feeling their fingers tangle in that familiar way. An intimacy, a promise, a physical touch that spoke of a far deeper connection. The pair of them heading into the future, together. This was going to be fun.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Subtle Blood
“You can’t expect me to take your word for things when I could work myself into a frenzy about them instead. Where would that get us?” (10)

“Aristocracy means ‘rule of the best’, and I can’t think of any company in which Chingford would be counted as best, including the average gaol. Yet the hereditary principle demands we grant power, authority, and vast swathes of land to a man who couldn’t run a whelk stall if you gave him a copy of How To Run A Whelk Stall with corners turned down to mark the good bits.” (12)

“So many things mattered about Kim. The way his deep brown eyes lit when he smiled, the intense concentration he brought to work or to bed. How he had made undrinkably weak tea for Will just once, watched him make his own with catlike attention, and got it spoon-dissolvingly perfect ever since. There were so many tiny wisping moments of trust and truth and vulnerability that had slowly become something real and solid between them, and Will didn’t want it to slip through his fingers. Not again.” (33)

“‘I expect he needed to get it out of his system. He was poised to ignore me bringing men home on a nightly basis, and was quite annoyed I didn’t.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Certainly not. That’s what discreet hotels are for.’
‘Come off it. You brought me here quick enough.’
‘But you were always different,’ Kim said simply, as though the words wouldn’t punch into Will’s gut and leave him breathless.” (35)

“”Will was tired of his life not mattering. It was bad enough to be a twig thrown onto the raging bonfire of the war; even worse when the disdain for his existence was up close and personal. And he was tired of seeing Kim flinch at words of scorn, no matter how tiny he managed to make the motion, and he’d stroked his hair as he shuddered out his horror at the killing, and if Sir Alan fucking Cheveley showed his face on the street now, Will would batter it all over again.” (52)

“‘A future. You know the concept? The shape you want the rest of your life to take? I want mine with you, all of it. A future, a forever. I love you.’ He said it quite calmly, as if it was an established fact.
‘People say I love you to madness, but I love you to sanity, because loving you is the sanest thing I have ever done. You are everything to me, Will, and I cannot lose you to my miserable family and an accident of birth.'” (122)

“It would be the sort of stupid self-sacrificing lie the heroes and heroines told each other in Victorian novels to string things out for another volume, and Will was fairly sure it wouldn’t work. Anyway the nicest girls of his acquaintance seemed pretty wrapped up in each other. He contemplated offering Maisie babies in a cottage as an alternative to Phoebe in Paris, and grinned to himself at her imagined response.” (130)

“Kim was a bloody twisting slippery weasel liar, and Will had to hold back a savage grin of pride.” (190)

“‘I don’t know what we’ll do but we’ll do it, all right? So you needn’t talk like I’m going to run away from this, because I don’t want an easy life, any more than I want a better man. What would I do with a better man? He wouldn’t like it, and I’d get bored.” (206)

“Some people had strong views on attacking a man from behind. Well, Will did himself, those views being that it was an excellent idea, best done with a blade. He missed the Messer.” (255)