Chapter Twenty-Three
D ue to her extensive and varied reading material, Kitty knew what to expect after a night of torrid lovemaking with a vampire, say. Or a Minotaur, or a kraken. An actual devil.
She did not know what to expect this morning, however. Never mind devils—earls were even more mythical than monsters.
For one thing, she woke in her bed knowing full well that she had not fallen asleep there. She had fallen asleep in Rhys’s arms, her bones soft and warm as melted wax. Had he carried her all the way up to her chamber? Was he the one who had tucked the coverlet around her? Had she snored? Murmured sleepy poems about his thighs? The way she thought about him being properly betrothed to someone else and bared her teeth?
She buried her face into her pillow. He wasn’t for her.
But oh, a woman could dream. She had never felt anything akin to what he made her feel. Even when she wasn’t naked.
It was extremely inconvenient.
And no one’s problem but her own. She could handle pontificating vicars, disparaging ladies, any number of flying vegetables. She could handle violent men shouting at her because they could not find their wives. Her family. Disdain.
So she could certainly handle her own self.
She washed with cold water from the basin and pulled on one of the dresses she had packed. It was her favorite one, the one with the pretty gathers at the capped sleeves. She pinned up her hair. Took it down, brushed it, pinned it up again. Wiped her damp palms on her skirt. Called herself a fool and a coward and marched herself down the stairs like a soldier going to battle.
Shelby met her with a smile. “The breakfast room is just this way.”
“Thank you, Shelby.”
She was shown to a room painted with murals of a country hillside, complete with shining rivers where nymphs gathered. The table was long enough to seat twenty people. The sideboard glittered with crystal bowls of sugar and marmalade and spiced honeys, as well as mountains of potatoes, rashers of bacon, coddled eggs, fried trout, and baskets of pastries. There was enough food for a dozen people. For an army.
Devil sat with a cup of steaming coffee and a folded newspaper. Across from him, Macleod drank tea. Yelena was beside him, eating raspberries with a gold fork. “Good morning,” she said, smiling.
“Good morning.” Kitty smiled back. This was a lot of smiling for someone who generally communicated with grimaces before noon.
“Good morning, Miss Caldecott,” Devil murmured.
His deep voice had the same effect it always did: it shot straight through her body like mulled wine on a cold day. She swallowed and tried not to look like she needed to fan herself. Did women really swoon at his feet? Probably.
Had he really carried her up to her bed in his arms? And she had slept through it like a cabbagehead?
She turned to the sideboard so her blush would not give her away entirely, but then could only hover there uncertainly. Could she serve herself? Was she supposed to sit down and wait for a footman? That did not seem expeditious. Her arms worked perfectly well. She could scoop up her own eggs. But she swore her aunt had once gone on a tirade about being served breakfast properly, and now she did not know what to do.
That was too many decisions to make before even a single cup of tea.
“Angus, make a plate for Miss Caldecott with some of everything,” Devil said calmly. “So she may decide what she likes.”
Kitty turned back to the table in relief. She sat in the nearest chair, probably a little too abruptly to be considered perfectly genteel. Something about the way Macleod also sat in his chair, alert and as though he had a claymore hiding under the table, as well as the way the footmen stood at attention. Even Shelby had the same wary stance. And they shared quite the collection of scars between them.
Something clicked in her head, like puzzle pieces. Everyone knew Devil had his own soldiers, but she had not realized before now that it might be literal. “You fought in the war together,” she murmured, one of the many mysteries of Devil coming to the light. “On the Continent. Didn’t you? All of you?”
“Aye, well spotted.” MacLeod nodded.
She turned to Devil, searching for new clues, new stories. He sat so still and expressionless that she knew she had hit a nerve. “I’m sorry.”
“He was our commanding officer. Saw us through Waterloo. And the years before.”
“Macleod.” Devil said it softly, but it reverberated like a command across a battlefield.
The men who had returned from the war with France had not returned the same. That much she knew for herself, though she had not thought many earls went fighting overseas, and certainly not through the blood and mud of Waterloo.
“Have a crumpet,” Yelena said lightly into the silence. Her black hair gleamed, coiled in perfect curls.
Kitty helped herself to a crumpet. A cup of strong tea was placed before her, with a dish of sugar and a crystal swan that poured milk from its beak. “Tom thinks he has good taste,” Devil said drily. Kitty did not miss the way the others relaxed their posture when it was clear he was changing the subject of the conversation.
Kitty poured herself some milk and smiled. It was such an odd, sweet thing to find in a house dripping with velvet and gold. Not to mention assassins. Footmen-turned-bodyguards. Soldiers home from war. She drank her tea, unsurprised to find it was the best she had drunk in her entire life, with hints of bergamot and vanilla. “I want to swim in this.”
“Shelby, make sure this tea is available to Miss Caldecott whenever she wants it.”
The butler bowed. He was standing near the door in case he was needed, with three of those footmen-turned-bodyguards in their livery. What a strange thing to have people standing about watching you eat. Especially with so many daggers gleaming on their persons. Now she knew what to look for: at the top of the boot, inside the lining of a coat, in the small of the back.
Kitty ate eggs and toasted bread with butter and honey and something green and salty that she loved but could not have named on pain of death. There was sweet custard topped with stewed raspberries. First thing in the morning, on a random, ordinary day. Maybe there was something to this ludicrously decadent lifestyle.
But she could not let it distract her. She could not let Devil distract her.
Even if he had carried her in his arms, even when he insisted she was supplied with tea. Even if he had saved her from abduction—she absolutely, positively, could not fall in love with him.
Too late.
She was in love with Devil. Lord Birmingham. Rhys. All the parts that made him who he was.
The knowledge of it flooded through her, and she would be as successful fighting it as she would have been fighting the tide.
It wasn’t just inconvenient. It was a bloody disaster .
“Miss Caldecott, are you well?” MacLeod asked. “You’ve turned green.”
She forced a smile. “Perfectly well.”
She was not at all in love. With the wrong man.
Liar.
“I would like to find Lady Caroline’s lady’s maid and speak to her,” she said instead. “Servants always know more than anyone else in a household. I assume she is the Agnes mentioned in the book.” The book she’d stolen. “It’s as good a place as any to start, anyway.”
“Very well. I’ll go with you,” Devil said. He was darkly and impeccably dressed as always, wearing power and menace as easily as other people wore perfume. His green eyes were sharp and otherworldly. His handsomeness made others feel awkward, as if they had too many hands, not enough feet. An extra nose. She could attest to it personally, even if his glance now made her only think of bare skin and fingers gripping her hips.
“You can’t come with us,” Kitty blurted out.
He looked mildly insulted. “Why not?”
“No lady’s maid is going to tell the truth with you looming over her.”
“I do not loom .”
“You are the Lord of Looming. And brooding.”
“Are you quite finished?”
She tilted her head. “The Daunting Devil. Harrowing Hades.” She flashed a grin. “ Now I’m finished. Maybe.”
“Oh, please say you aren’t,” Tom interrupted, dragging himself toward the silver carafe of coffee. It was shaped like a bear rearing up on its back legs, clearly another one of his purchases. She loved it. “What time is it?”
“Half past ten.”
He shuddered. His hair was not quite tamed and he wore a dressing gown and no slippers. There was lipstick on his neck. “We aren’t becoming morning people, are we?”
“The Dastardly Devil?” Kitty asked. “Perish the thought.”
“I really do like you,” Tom yawned at her over his cup.
“I like you too.”
Devil sat back in his chair, faintly amused and also exasperated. “The lady’s maid?” he asked, steering back to the matter at hand.
“Oh, right,” Kitty said. She licked a crumb off her finger, realized it was probably a terribly gauche thing to do, contemplated fretting over it, caught the flare in Devil’s eyes, and decided right then and there that Mayfair manners were not going to interfere with her fun. “Um.”
“A lady’s maid will be too scared of repercussions to speak freely if you are there,” Yelena explained as Kitty tried to herd her thoughts back together. It was as successful as herding cats toward the sea.
“Yes,” she said. “That. Especially if she has been around the likes of Portsmouth for any length of time at all. She’ll be scared.”
Devil looked disgruntled. It was endearing.
Kitty did not have time to be endeared.
“Right, we’re off, then,” she declared.
Devil frowned. “Take Brutus.” Brutus was his most fearsome footman, for lack of a better term. Man-at-arms? Captain? Soldier. He was not as big as the Viking brothers, but everything about him screamed a slow and bloody death. He probably made rampaging bulls cry with fear. Kitty adored him. But he was not right for the task.
“He is not going to make a maid feel any more at ease.” She rolled her eyes. “Leave the spinsters and the maids to me, if you please.”
“That’s why you hired me,” Yelena pointed out. “To protect Miss Caldecott.”
Devil nodded. “Fine.”
Kitty curtsied before him, as low as she knew how, as though he were an emperor. But also: mockingly. “I wasn’t asking for your permission,” she said tartly.
The word permission sizzled between them, rife with memories of sweaty whimpers, desperate hands.
“Brat,” he said softly.
She sent him one last taunting smile and then hurried out of the breakfast room before she could lose her momentary victory.
Thanks to Priya’s folder on Lady Caroline, it was not too difficult to discover that “Agnes” was a Miss Agnes Jones, and she now worked for a dowager who liked to sit in the sun by the Serpentine of an afternoon and doze. Agnes sat next to her on the bench, watching the ducks and glaring at any pickpockets who dared stray too near, thinking an old woman and her middle-aged companion easy pickings. The dowager snored on, blissfully unaware.
Kitty would not have wanted to face off against Agnes either. She looked formidable. It was not likely that either Brutus or Devil would have put her off. That would be helpful.
Probably.
“Miss Agnes Jones?”
Agnes’s mouth flattened suspiciously. “Yes.”
“I’m Kitty Cald—”
“I know who you are.”
Kitty blinked at her. “You do?”
“You own that shop.”
“I do. Perhaps I ought to change the name to That Shop, since that is all anyone ever calls it.”
Agnes shrugged. “I like it there, whatever you call it.”
“You do? Thank you.”
“Don’t read much, but it feels nice.”
Kitty beamed at her. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Agnes snorted. “Your man needs lessons, then.”
Kitty grinned. She couldn’t help it. “I will tell him you said so.”
Agnes sat back, the sunshine playing over the cap pinned to her fair hair. She looked strong, tired. Sad. “I doubt that’s why you sought me out.”
“No,” Kitty admitted. “No, it’s not.” She took Lord Tadworth’s Delights of the Duchess , volume seven, from her reticule. Agnes’s gaze darted around, landing on the water, the trees, a nursemaid with a pram, a dog slipping its leash, then finally, finally on the book in Kitty’s hands. Kitty opened it to the page with the neat handwriting. “This belonged to Lady Caroline, didn’t it?”
“Why do you want to know?” Agnes asked flatly. “Did Lord Portsmouth send you?”
“Definitely not.” Kitty decided it would be more expedient to just tell her the truth. “I want to know because if I don’t do something, my sister will be his next bride.”
“If that’s true, don’t just do something, do anything .”
Kitty shivered. “This was her book, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, she was a great reader. Went to your shop often enough.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She and Miss Campbell would send books back and forth to each other. They grew up together, you see. And Lady Caro would not disdain the friendship even when she became a countess and Lord Portsmouth forbade her from the association.”
Miss Campbell. Kitty stored the name away for later. “Do you know what their plan was?”
Agnes shook her head.
Kitty rubbed her breastbone. “Blast. Can you tell me about her? Lady Caroline?”
“She was young, barely twenty-two, when she married. Her parents were ecstatic. They chose to look the other way on the fate of his previous wives as soon as Lord Portsmouth told them he did not need Lady Caro’s dowry.”
“Sounds familiar.” Kitty grimaced. And Lord Portsmouth was in his early forties. She already knew his other wives were in their early twenties as well. Evie was only nineteen. “Did she love him?”
Agnes snorted. “That man is unlovable, though he puts on a good mask, as long as he gets his way. As long as he gets exactly what he wants.”
“And what did he want?”
“A male heir,” Agnes replied bluntly.
“That’s why his wives…do not last?” Kitty said. “Why he keeps marrying younger and younger.”
“He’s obsessed. Controlling. Desperate.” Agnes sighed. “Lady Caro knew it was going to get even worse. We had a plan, you see. But in the end, she just vanished.”
“Do you think she ran away? Could she be safe somewhere?”
“I hope so,” Agnes said. “I pray for that every day.”
Yelena handed her a handkerchief because she was the type to carry such a thing, while Kitty had two books, the key to her shop, and a wrinkled, empty packet of headache powder in her reticule. “Lady Caro sounds resourceful,” she said comfortingly.
“She was clever as ten cats.” Agnes nodded. “I hope your sister Evangeline is the same, Miss Caldecott.”
“How do you know her name?”
Agnes pulled the newspaper from her employers’ slack hands. “The dowager loves the gossip pages. She likes to predict who will have a falling out.” Agnes unfolded the paper to the section she was searching for. “Your sister’s engagement is mentioned here. And here. And again here.”
Kitty went cold. “Bollocks.”
Agnes smiled briefly, as if finally trusting her. Her smile died. “If Lord Portsmouth has made the announcement public, there’s no stopping him.”
“ I will stop him.”
“I wish you luck, Miss Caldecott. I truly do.”
“Thank you,” Kitty said. She would take all the luck she could find.
They were running out of time.