Chapter Nine
K itty did not sleep well.
Hardly a surprise.
She had a feeling that the man lurking across the street was there under Lord Portsmouth’s orders. He knew very well that Evie was not in Paris. He was loathsome, but he wasn’t an idiot. Pity. She would have preferred that to the cruelty that showed through his shining smile. It soured the blood.
She would have to carry on as she always did. Work at the shop, lead tours, consult with collectors and writers. Do everything as though she were not hiding her sister in a house not so far away.
Lord Portsmouth did not like being contravened in any way. He had chosen Evie, and in his mind, that was that.
Over Kitty’s dead body.
She let the curtain fall back into place. A dog barked from somewhere. A warning. She read for an hour or so, then tossed and turned in her bed, which might as well have been made entirely of thorns and iron nails.
She woke in a beastly temper.
She snuck out of the house, deciding that discretion was the better part of valor. She might actually get into a physical tussle with her aunt or her father, were she to come across them in the hall. Not a particularly refined aspect of her character, but there you had it.
The streets were mostly filled with servants rushing back from the markets and people like her getting ready for the day. It would be a few hours yet before the peerage were ready to shop or even wander about for their own amusement.
Kitty let herself in, inhaling the comforting and familiar scents, enjoying the way the soft light fell on her books. The Golden Griffin Bookshop was a balm. A port in the storm.
Also, it would seem, under attack.
Across the street, the same man from earlier appeared to be watching her. Watching her watch him watch her. When he headed her way, Kitty fumbled to lock the door and pull the curtain.
Just in time.
The handle turned under her fingers. She stepped back when the door rattled ominously. “I know you’re in there,” the man barked. “Let me in.”
It was foolish maybe to pretend she was not there when he had clearly seen her, but Kitty refused to grace him with a response. Partly because her heart was thundering and she was very afraid her voice would come out reedy and thin.
“Lord Portsmouth wants a word.”
She considered dragging a bookcase across the door but would never be able to manage it.
“Just tell him where your sister is—that’s all he wants to know.”
She went hot, then cold. Her skin prickled painfully. There was just enough fury to temper the fear. “She’s in Paris,” she said.
“Don’t lie to the earl. It doesn’t go well for girls like you.”
“We’re closed,” she shot back with false sweetness. “If you’re looking to buy a novel about the torrid love affair between a sea monster and a pirate, you’ll have to come back.”
Confused silence.
Another rattle of the door while her breath caught in her throat.
It was another quarter of an hour before she opened the curtain. The traffic on the road had increased, blocking her view. If he was still out there, she could not see him. She did not for one moment believe he had given up so easily.
She snuck out the back door and popped through the cramped kitchen of the adjoining teahouse. She could not afford the cup of very strong tea nor the macaron with chocolate shavings, but sometimes such things were a necessity. She drank her tea and let the warmth settle through her. She drank two full pots before she felt equipped to return to the shop.
Mostly out of pride. And because she could not hide out forever.
She even went to the front, but that was spite more than pride. She found them both very useful when things turned sour.
And the Golden Griffin Bookshop was hers. She would not let anyone take it from her. Not a bully sent by an earl or a bully sent by the Ladies’ Association for Moral Standards.
Because her week did not appear to be improving apace, the front windows were covered in slimy rhubarb compote and what looked like the innards of a steak-and-kidney pie. She would have loved to have blamed it on the stranger sent by Portsmouth, but she knew better. Such a wealth of bullies for her to choose from.
Kitty wrinkled her nose and muttered curses that would have made a hardened criminal blush, but did not lose her bored, placid expression. They did not deserve her reaction.
They deserved a great deal worse.
She reached for the broom tucked into the doorway. No one ever tried to steal it. It would be a nightmare to clean.
“Again?” Devil asked from behind her.
She would have liked to say that she jumped or squeaked like an adorable mouse.
She did not.
She shrieked. Then she proceeded to choke spectacularly on said shriek and finally cough out a strangled giggle. Her eyes watered in protest.
Devil merely watched her, one eyebrow raised. “Are you quite finished?”
She thumped her chest to make sure her heart still knew what to do. “You scared me.”
“Evidently.”
He was so polished, so confident. It made her want to flummox him again.
It made her want to do other things, too. A great many other things that made her toes curl just from her thinking about it. And were much more enjoyable to contemplate than the rest of her day.
Devil was clearly not overcome with manfully controlled desire for the shrieking redheaded spinster standing in what could only be described as the world’s most disgusting soup. He frowned at the mess. “How often does this happen?”
“Once a week. Twice.” She sighed. Just a little. “Often.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her or was arguing with the facts; he simply did not care for them. At all.
He gestured subtly, not even turning his head. Kitty did turn her head but could not see whom he was summoning until they were suddenly right there—two tall blond men who could only be brothers and who also resembled enormous Vikings lost on a raid, about a thousand years too late. Kitty had to crane her neck to take them all in. “Hello.”
They inclined their heads in unison. They were very polite for marauders.
“Set up shifts,” Devil ordered them. “Overnight as well.”
“Yes, Devil,” they chorused.
Kitty frowned. “What’s going on here?”
“I’ll tell you what is no longer going on—no one is tossing produce at you, rotten or otherwise.”
Kitty had read more than her fair share of poetry. Some of it romantic, much of it filthy. None of it compared to his steely, cold offense. On her behalf.
She went warm right down to her toes even as she tried not to. She had to remind herself that she was not the swooning type. “But…you don’t like me.” He probably did not need reminding of that. “I should think you would enjoy seeing me get my just deserts.”
“If anyone will be serving you just deserts, it will be me.”
Goodness.
Once again, her body interpreted his threats as delicious promises. She nearly squirmed under his hard, knowing gaze. She licked her lower lip. His eyes followed the movement, flashed.
“Give them your broom.”
She handed over the broom with embarrassingly quick compliance. “That’s very kind of you,” she said to the nearest Viking brother.
“I’m the one telling them to clean it up,” Devil muttered.
“Yes, but they’re the ones actually doing it, and believe me, it’s not pleasant work.” She smiled at them again. “Would you like some tea? Maybe a slice of cake?” She did not have cake and could not afford it.
“No, thank you, your ladyship.”
Kitty snorted as she turned back inside. “I’m not one of his aristo ladies. Kitty will do fine.”
“Miss Caldecott will do fine,” Devil told them. “And don’t look at her like that. She’s not the damned cake.”
Kitty poked her head outside, positively beaming. “Someone thinks I’m cake?”
Devil almost looked amused. Almost . He landed somewhere between exasperated and tolerant. She would have argued for the pleasure of arguing, but that would have also meant cleaning up the soupy mess on the front step. No, thank you. She was too tired for that sort of nonsense.
And she was most definitely too tired for the mess that greeted her inside the shop. Someone had broken in while she drank two pots of tea and tried not feel as though she were drowning.
Someone with very little regard for books. Fury and fear chased each other up her spine, like cats with their claws out. “Bollocks.”
It was all she had time to say before Devil yanked her right off her feet, shoving her behind him. “Outside.”
“I doubt anyone is lingering.”
“ Outside, ” he ordered her. “Godric,” he added to one of the brothers, “check the back alley. Wulf, keep an eye on Miss Caldecott.”
Kitty was abruptly standing on the stoop with her very own gigantic Northman shield. London was immediately wilder, darker. Parasols and footmen and little white dogs on diamond leashes may as well have been on the moon. This was the purview of footpads and housebreakers and men who lurked in the shadows.
“Clear,” Devil called, and some of the tingling apprehension pumping through her bloodstream abated. She shivered.
“Thank you, Wulf,” she managed before marching back into her shop.
The view had not improved. One shelf was pushed over. Her teapot was in shards, her inkwell turned over on the desk. Books lay scattered everywhere, delicate pages in disarray. The rage she felt could have rivalled the sun. To throw fruit or fish bones was one thing. Insults scrawled in paint she could handle. Lectures, disdain. They were nothing.
These were her books .
“Are you crying?” Devil sounded just as hard as he usually did, but also concerned. Un-devilish.
“I am furious ,” Kitty said through her teeth as she wiped her eyes. “Tears do not quite cover the bloodthirsty vengeance I mean to have.”
“Good girl.”
She nearly punched him. She also nearly purred. It was very confusing. Chalk it up to the events of the last few days.
Then she decided she might quite like to punch him after all. He caught her first before it could connect—of course he did.
“Don’t patronize me,” she said. She was breathless. Entirely because of the anger, of course. It could not possibly be for any other reason.
“I assure you, I wasn’t. I meant every word.”
She honestly didn’t know if that was better or worse. He was still holding her fist. She was quite sure he was more accustomed to kissing the back of ladies’ knuckles, not catching wild swings at his pretty face. Why was he so blasted pretty?
“Has this happened before?” he asked quietly.
There was a first-edition book by his boot. She made a tiny sound of horror. Monsters had been here. There was no other explanation.
“Kitty?”
“What? That’s a seventeenth-century book .”
He released her in order to crouch down to save the book. It was The School of Women and, naturally, had fallen open at a page with a drawing of ladies shopping for toys of a phallic nature. Kitty would not blush or squirm. She was not some young miss, sheltered and sweet.
“I asked if this kind of thing has happened before,” Devil said.
She shook her head. “No. It’s usually vegetables and diatribes. Lettuce and lectures. I could start my own penny dreadful series, all alliterative poetry.” She rubbed at her breastbone. “Nothing like this.”
“Then you’re not going to like what you find in the back room,” he said.
She met his gaze, her bones already sparking with outrage. She launched herself toward the back room, where she kept her overstock and her little table for tea and muffins for the Ladies’ Novel Society.
The contents of several boxes were tossed about. Books, periodicals, journals. Inkwells, quills, random bits and bobs from lots she had purchased from an estate sale before her entire life had been upended, much like her shop.
She cursed. A lot.
“You are vicious,” Devil remarked.
“Not like your duke’s daughters, I know.” Her hands were balled into fists again, on her hips.
“If you think that, you really have not met much of the aristocracy.”
“My father is barely a baron,” she reminded him. “And he lost his fortune some time ago. Some of it to you, I am sure.”
“Very likely.” He was not bothered. “At any rate, I happen to like vicious. I trust it far more than a swoon or a simper.” He slid her a sidelong glance. “Just don’t punch me again.”
“No promises.”
The easy repartee between them was surprising. Even more surprising was how it put her at ease, even with everything in literal shambles around her. She dropped into the chair, fatigue blurring the edges of everything. “What am I going to do?” She hadn’t meant to ask it out loud, and she certainly would not have expected a response of any kind, not from Devil. It was more a whisper to herself.
“We’re going to get it all sorted,” he said darkly. “And then I’m going to find who did this.”
She blinked up at him. “You will?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” She knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the question popped out before she could stop it. If her father were here, he would have flapped his hands with the strain of it and then walked away. Her aunt would have refused to get her gloves dusty. Her grandfather would have said, “Good riddance,” followed by the many reasons she deserved the break-in.
No one she knew, aside from her sister, would have even considered getting even. Would have already assessed what needed doing and called for Wulf through the back door to send him for whiskey and hot tea with biscuits, after which he and his brother could put the bookshelves back up where they belonged.
Kitty bit her lip very hard to stop more tears from forming. This was not the time for crying. Not for that reason, anyway—just because someone else was making the decisions for a moment. Just a moment. And they were kind decisions.
“Was anything taken?” Devil asked her.
“I don’t know.” She swallowed, forcing herself to stop staring at him. It was a very pleasant pastime, but no good would come of it. The way his hair curled lightly over the back of his cravat, as if he’d just been standing on the windy moors, would not get her books back on the shelves. “I have an inventory for the shop, of course, but these books were bought from an estate sale. I haven’t had time to really go through them.”
Devil frowned at them. Suspiciously.
“I don’t think a thief hid inside one of those boxes for the past week, just waiting for this moment to strike,” she pointed out.
“Fair enough. Do you often buy from estates?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes. It’s not what I specialize in.”
“I know what you specialize in.”
“Everyone does.”
“Your detractors could easily have done this.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s not the way they usually operate. And if most of my books were tossed about instead of stolen and my money box is still intact, why bother rifling it in the first place?”
“A very good question.”
“Just to punish me, I suppose?” She sounded mournful even to her own ears. That would not do.
He glowered at that.
The tip of the knife she used to spread butter on the muffins she bought from the cart outside was impaled in the wall. It was vaguely menacing. But mostly puzzling. “As a threat, that needs work,” she decided.
“It’s threatening enough.”
“It’s unclear and not very informative.”
“I’m sorry, are you finding fault with how you’ve been attacked?”
“I’m used to better, if I’m honest.”
“I don’t think you realize just how terrifying that is.” He tilted her chin up, searching her face. “But at least you’ve color back in your cheeks.”
“This kind of thing usually makes me splotchy, not pale. Curse of the redheads.” Why had she said that? “I didn’t sleep well.” And why had she added that ? He didn’t care. And it didn’t matter.
Honestly. A little break-in was no reason to abandon all of her wits.
Tell that to those very addled wits, currently fleeing the scene of the crime.
She made a small tower of books rescued from the floor, to give herself something to do that was not chattering. Or tearing up. Or wondering what he would do if she just leaned over and bit him. Just a little. Right there on his sullen bottom lip.
She was absolutely witless .
She gathered up a trinket box and a knot of the kind of ribbons people used as bookmarks sometimes, thick and velvet and clamped with gold beads. A stack of lace doilies. A book with a false cover: Etiquette and Decorum . Underneath: Ravished by the Rakehell by the Nightingale. Clara’s nom de plume.
It would take hours to set everything back to rights.
“This will take all day,” she said. “I am quite certain you have better things to do.”