Chapter Ten
W hat the hell was he doing?
Devil was lingering, and he never lingered.
Lingering usually meant tears or threats, begging or blustering, depending on the person. Assassination attempts more than once. There was a reason he traveled with his own men. Dodging bullets and blades became tiresome after a while.
But here he was, demanding filth be cleaned off shop windows and tea fetched for its owner, who might herself breathe fire if given half a chance. He did not hold good odds for whoever had broken into her shop. She would eviscerate them.
What was left of them, at any rate.
And it would be his pleasure to watch.
Anyone could see that Kitty would put herself between anyone who needed her and danger. He’d heard the stories of the Golden Griffin, not just the kinds of literature she sold to those bold enough to ask for it, but the fact that women who needed help tended to find their way to her. The ladies of Mayfair might have the Spinster Society, but there were others not fine enough to be able to march up to the front door of a London townhouse. Lady Priya would let them in, of that he had no doubt. But they were more comfortable coming round the back door of that odd little bookshop north of Mayfair.
Lady Priya collected secrets; Devil collected debts. Kitty collected strays.
She had been doing so long before their paths had crossed. Before she stole from him.
She knew how to take care of herself. She didn’t need him. He shouldn’t even be here. Especially not without his reclaimed vowel back in his hand. But he hadn’t been able to stop picturing her sliding across a rooftop at a dangerous speed. Or the way she had leapt between her and her sister in Priya’s side garden. That ridiculous hedgehog in a gold cage.
It was enough to addle any man.
It should not have been enough to addle him. He had seen too much, knew too much.
And yet she insisted on taking him by surprise.
Not to mention the way her lips parted when he claimed her mouth. The heat of her soft body. He was well past the age where a pretty face and a tart tongue should lead him in circles. Tell that to the rest of his body. There was a hunger searing through him such as he had never known.
He was a man of four and thirty. It was embarrassing, really.
Courtesans and debutantes and widows were constantly throwing themselves into his path, all perfumed breasts and salacious whispers, and he barely noticed anymore. But when Kitty tripped right into his life he was suddenly a poet? Thinking about her freckles like they were constellations of rare stars. Comparing the taste of her to oranges and spices from faraway lands.
Preposterous. He didn’t have a poetic bone in his body. Ask any of the numerous men who attempted to weasel their way out of a debt owed to him.
Devil watched Kitty for one more moment, not understanding why he was loath to leave. Finally, he bowed his head abruptly in farewell and stalked out the front door, feeling like an ass.
With poetry on the brain.
He was not ten feet from the door, between a lady with a ruffled parasol and a gentleman walking a small dog, when MacLeod joined him. “Trouble at the Sins,” he said. He was a short man in his late thirties, with a lightning-fast punch, a ready smile, and ladies constantly trailing him. Also a ragged scar across his throat from where a sword had nearly decapitated him. Men who returned home from the war were not safe, even in the fine streets of London.
“There’s always trouble somewhere,” Devil remarked. “How did you find me?”
MacLeod snorted. Fair enough. It was an insulting question. He might be the third son of a viscount, but he was also Devil’s first lieutenant, for lack of a better title now that they were no longer in the army. He knew the gaming tables and the aristocracy almost as well as Devil did. And liked them even less. “You’re up early,” he said.
Devil did not answer.
MacLeod glanced over his shoulder, spotted Godric at the bookshop door. “That’s a new position. Is it part of the standard rotation now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Devil, once again, did not answer. MacLeod smiled, slowly. The kind of smile that was just asking to be punched. “Shut it.”
“What about the Sins?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
When Devil left the bookshop, the ensuing silence had a different quality, as if it too knew what was suddenly missing. As if it remembered him, taking up all of the space without even trying. The smell of incense. The air crackling the way it did before a storm. The cup in Kitty’s hand was warm, the tea a comforting aroma.
He had sent for tea. For her.
She did not understand him.
Her fingers tightened on the glazed clay. It was sweetened with milk and sugar. She had not had both milk and sugar together in her tea for months, including her two pots guzzled just that morning. A small thing considering the state of, well, everything. But an important thing. Because he had thought of it.
She was very close to smiling into the tea. She was simpering over hot water and leaves. She set it down with a decisive thud. Picked it up for one more sip. Back down.
Time to get to work.
Sorting books was soothing. Cataloguing damage to books was infuriating. The combination was exhausting. Still, it kept her from fretting about Evie. A little.
Barely.
She was very good at doing several things at once. She could juggle three disasters at the same time. If only it were a merchantable skill. She got the shop back to rights and then tackled the mess of the last estate sale purchase. She often hired a Mr. Mayhew to purchase on her behalf. He traveled more easily, not being tied to a shop or a sister. And he was a man. As a woman, she was sometimes not even allowed inside the auction house. And when she was , she had to spend most of her time dodging sales tactics and suggestive smirks. “Accidental” brushes against her backside.
It was a good lot: mostly books, with very few knickknacks. She still had a collection of glass ferrets from the time that lady had refused to part with her dead aunt’s book collection unless Kitty also took her ferret collection. They were rather disconcerting, with eyes that followed you everywhere and teeth made of bone. When Aunt Priscilla was being particularly…well, herself , Kitty hid them in her bedroom as a little surprise.
Sometimes revenge was a glass menagerie with painted eyeballs, strategically placed on a bedside table. Inside the chamber pot.
Kitty was particularly proud of that one. Aunt Priscilla’s shriek had echoed down the hallway. As she had just pushed Evie in front of a carriage, it was the very least Kitty could do.
Kitty crouched under the table to rescue a book shoved at a precarious angle against the tipped-over kettle. A small spill of water soaked into her sleeve, but thankfully, it had not reached the book. She backed out and flipped through the thin pages to be sure. Desires of the Duchess , volume two. A beloved staple for most of Kitty’s collection. Racy, courageous. Deeply and deliciously wicked.
Also defaced.
Someone had written in the book. It was clearly not by the thieves, who had broken in and then proceeded to not actually steal anything. The handwriting was bold, feminine. Slightly smudged, as though rushed, like the book had been shut tight before the ink was fully dried. A hasty scrawl, a note curious to find in the margins. Kitty was accustomed to notes in nature guides correcting the author’s translation of the botanical Latin (a surprisingly common occurrence), but it was less common in novels women hid under their beds. This was personal. Desperate.
I do not think it long now . I’ll be at the oak tree but have a care. We are none of us safe now.
No name from the writer or the intended reader, but when she shut the book, she recognized the name embossed on the cloth cover: Lady Caroline Portsmouth.
Lord Portsmouth’s third wife, missing and only presumed dead.
The Seven Deadly Sins was going to be a pleasure hall like no other.
Vauxhall Gardens had thousands of lamps and fireworks, supper boxes and the Rotunda, but it also struggled with the miasma of the Thames on hot summer days and rain on every other day.
The Sins was entirely contained in a Mayfair mansion Devil had confiscated in a wager on which a marquis had tried to renege.
There was no reneging on wagers placed during a Devil’s Night, and not at the Sins either. Every deadly sin would be represented: fine foods, willing companions, a boxing ring in the basement, roulette wheels and billiards tables above. Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Pride. None of it would be off-limits. Not at the Sins.
Just as soon as things stopped going wrong.
Which was not going to be today, clearly.
Devil’s brother Tom was in the foyer, bleary eyed with the hazards of too much wine or whiskey or both. And something else. “What the bloody hell happened to your face?” Devil demanded.
Tom winced. “Why are you shouting?”
“Why are you bleeding on my new floor?”
Tom blinked at his feet. “That’s not blood, that’s wine. I think.”
“And your face?”
“I was born handsome. You’re just jealous.”
Devil scrubbed a hand over his jaw. His brother could talk in circles like no one he had ever known. And he was a man grown at twenty and four, but also an idiot. Apparently. “We talked about this.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Well, that’s rude.” Tom flinched when someone started hammering just behind him. “Bloody damn hell.”
“Serves you right,” Devil said dispassionately. His brother looked the worse for wear but not in any immediate danger. “Learn to hold your drink.”
“I hold it fine,” Tom muttered. “Why are you here?”
“It’s my club. Why are you here?”
“I wanted to make sure the mirrors were hung up properly,” he said, squinting. “But they are too bright. My teeth hurt.”
Devil sighed. “Go up to Sloth and lie down. The upholstered settees came in yesterday. And don’t throw up on anything,” he added. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”
“Yes, yes,” Tom mumbled.
Devil walked through the many rooms that comprised the Sins, noting what had been done and what still needed doing. The main attraction was Greed: the largest gaming hell in London, and inside a pleasure hall to boot. It took up the entire ballroom and the rest of the rooms on that level. He’d had billiards table hand carved and felted with ruby red. The roulette wheels gleamed invitingly. The card tables were arranged so it would be easy for servants to circulate with drinks and food on platters, encouraging players to stay longer, wager more. Lose more. The dice were stacked and the cards were marked.
But not all of them.
Temptation only kept a person’s attention so long as expectations were occasionally met, just enough to whet the appetite, never enough to satisfy it completely. That was the promise of the Sins: more, more, and more.
He was beginning to know the process more intimately than he cared to. Cards did not tempt him, nor dice. He did not care for gambling or pugilism. Women were lovely, of course, but did not turn his head for long.
Until Kitty Caldecott.
She was a dangerous one. Even before he realized she was a madwoman nearly pitching off the rooftop and then running through town in her bare feet. He honestly did not know whether to laugh or curse. A novelty for him.
He knew what he ought to do. Crush her. Without mercy.
Instead, he had been abruptly obsessed with getting shoes on her feet and a shawl that was made of more than red tatters around her. To warm her up. Before he stripped her down.
Sudden and unexpected desire was not so strange a thing. It would not distract him. He would not let it. She should know that nothing distracted him.
He remembered her from the Eastbourne estate, diligently working below the balcony where he oversaw Devil’s Night. He remembered the flash of her gray eyes, the clumsy tumble that had sent her crashing into him.
Not accidental, that tumble. As it happened.
It should not make him want to smile. Nothing made him want to smile.
He jerked his hand through his hair as the workmen paused to nod to him, the air thick with furniture polish and sawdust. He forwent Gluttony, the lavish banquet hall that only needed more tables with the carved lion’s heads, and Envy, the ballroom reserved for dancing, for those who wanted to be seen while pretending not to want it. Who wanted the jealousy and the attention of the other guests.
But in the end, the Sins would be the only thing holding their attention.
The pleasure hall held a purpose beyond pleasure, and Devil would not see it eclipsed. Not for duke or marquis. Not for the king himself.
Not even for a tart-tongued bookseller with golden freckles.
Wrath was in the lowest level, a boxing ring with sawdust to soak up the blood and tiered benches all around. It smelled like damp stone and sweat and wine. Just as it should.
Brutus stood in the ring, his hair shorn close to his head, leaning on his walking stick. He was easily twice the size of the fighters he was training and could still beat them into the ground, even with the knee that had never healed quite right on the Continent. He glanced over at Devil and murmured directions to his men before ducking under the ropes. They rushed to obey even though he had spoken as softly as a nursemaid to a babe. A man of his size did not need to raise his voice.
“You’re up and about early,” he said. “Is it that girl?”
“What girl?”
Brutus smiled. He was easy with his smiles. “MacLeod mentioned a girl.”
“MacLeod gossips like an old granny.”
“Don’t let my old granny hear you say that.”
“I don’t have a death wish, Brutus,” Devil said drily. Everyone in the family was roughly the size of a horse. Granny Brutus, as she was known, was in fact sitting in the corner with a cup of tea and her knitting.
“You’re pulling your punches!” she shouted at the prizefighters. “Don’t make me come in there and show you how it’s done.”
Devil inclined his head in her direction, all lordly courtesy. Because he wasn’t an idiot. “Granny Brutus.”
“Why, it’s the very Devil himself.” She grinned. “Have you brought me any stories?”
“He’s sweet on a girl,” Brutus supplied.
“I will take out your other kneecap,” Devil muttered.
“Oi, if she’s focused on you, she’s not focused on me.” Brutus shrugged as if he did not adore his grandmother. He only liked to see everyone squirm when she crooked her gnarled finger at them imperiously. Even Devil came when she summoned him, to his men’s great delight.
Until she turned on them, of course.
“Who’s this girl?” she demanded. Her hair was still thick and braided in a white crown on her head. Queen of the Rings. The lines around her eyes were deep grooves, put there by decades of grins and glares.
“There’s no girl.” Kitty was a woman. It wasn’t entirely a lie.
“There should be a girl.” Granny Brutus scowled. “I need help to keep you lot in line.”
Devil kissed her papery cheek. “You manage just fine on your own.”
“She’s not one of those debutantes, is she? Too young to know better and drowning in perfume?”
“No.”
“Hah, so there is a girl.”
Devil did smile that time. “Your younger fighter just let his guard down. He drops his elbow.”
It was the only thing likely to distract her, and it worked. She stood up, jabbing her knitting needle in the direction of the ring. “Oi, you wet noodle. Where’s your center?”
Brutus shook his head, grinning. “Sacrificing the young, are we?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
Granny Brutus marched inside the ring, jabbing her elbows and punching the younger fighter hard enough to crack his nose. Brutus winced. “Granny, go easy.”
“Ha!”
Devil shook his head. “If they survive, there’ll be none stronger. Or wilier.” The second prizefighter—as yet undefeated—landed on his backside when Granny went for his kneecaps. “MacLeod said there was trouble?”
Brutus nodded. “Back door was off its hinges this morning. And the shipment of liquor was stolen before it even got here. Footpads.”
“Footpads taking on a cart bound for the Sins?”
“Could be a coincidence. Ordinary hazards.”
“Could be.”
“But you don’t think it is.”
“I never do.”
“Which is why we’re still all alive,” Brutus said.
Devil’s expression did not change, even though it made him want to squirm like a young lad with his first compliment, while also taking the city to the sword, when his men looked at him like that. He would not let them down. They had been through too much together. Mud, blood, freezing their arses off at night, sweating sickness between being shot at. Inept officers in charge who did not care for much beyond their luxuries and renown.
“What do you want me to do?” Brutus asked.
“Nothing,” Devil said. “I’ll go to the clubs, let myself be seen. And heard.”
Brutus snorted. “Aye, that ought to do it.”
Kitty ruminated on the book and the inked note for the rest of the day and did not come to any brilliant conclusions. It was a coincidence—it had to be.
An odd one.
And by the time the sun set, Kitty was no longer certain she believed in coincidences. Still, it left her no further ahead. It was hardly a map to Lady Caroline’s location. For one thing, there had to be thousands of oak trees in England.
She needed to know who the note had been meant for. The thieves had not found it. Or had they left it behind? That made no sense at all. None of it did. All Kitty knew was that she needed to know more about Lady Caroline and Lord Portsmouth.
And then the invitation arrived. Presumably it had been sent to the house, but Aunt Priscilla had also sent a note to the shop. Lord Portsmouth was hosting a dinner—no doubt originally meant to be a celebration of his recent nuptials to Evie.
Over Kitty’s dead body.
The Caldecott family’s presence was not a suggestion. It would quell some of the rumors if they were in attendance. Evie had not run from the earl and everything was proceeding at pace. Look, her older sister was right there drinking pink champagne and eating mushroom caps filled with soft cheese. Or whatever it was that was served at such dinners.
Aunt Priscilla’s note was not subtle: Do not embarrass us and do not forget that Evie is in Paris.
Kitty might have preferred a night joining the mudlarks sifting through the stinking mud of the Thames for teeth and treasure, but they needed everyone to assume Evie was in Paris. Or at the very least, not hiding from Lord Portsmouth. He especially needed to believe it for as long as possible. Or, at least, be willing to pretend he believed it.
Not to mention that it would be so much easier to sneak through his house and rifle through his belongings with an invitation.