A Deal with the Devil (The Spinster Society #2)

Chapter One

One month earlier…

K itty Caldecott was not the kind of woman to be invited to a Devil’s Night.

She did not own a single silk ball gown, was not being courted by a fine gentleman in a fine hat, and she did not know how to dance a quadrille.

Also, her father was a very poor gambler.

Very, very poor.

Unfortunately, he did not accept this simple fact of nature and insisted that his long overdue Great Win was on the next hand. Or the one after that. Surely the next.

Perhaps understandably, Kitty was not particularly fond of gambling. On a hand of cards or the roll of a die, or whether or not Lord Whatshisname would topple his carriage at the next race through Hyde Park. (He would. They always did. It was a sucker’s bet. One her father would surely jump on.)

But Kitty did know books.

Especially wicked, salacious ones. Joyful ones.

And the Marquis of Eastbourne had been chosen to host this specific Devil’s Night, which was ruled over by Lord Birmingham, also known as Devil. He held the bank and the reins, but he chose an assortment of earls and dukes and marquis to host the event.

Marquises? Marquesses?

Kitty also did not know the correct grammatical forms of address.

Kitty’s own father was only a very minor baron, and so she had never really had to learn the more arcane rules of Mayfair Polite Society. To her aunt’s very loud and pointed chagrin.

To be fair, almost everything was to her aunt’s very loud and pointed chagrin.

She had never been invited either. Which was no great surprise.

But Kitty had. For the one night, dusk until dawn, to provide the best naughty novels and chapbooks to the guests, most especially the new Nightingale chapbook not yet available in shops. A most unique party favor that would also allow her to put aside some money to save her sister.

For that reason, Kitty had many complimentary thoughts about the marquis.

That was before the marquis was hauled away by several of Devil’s rather brutal-looking men. Peers fought for the privilege of hosting such a night. Even men who abducted women, apparently.

That was before a lot of things.

The evening was as decadent and debauched as expected. Guests were instructed to wear red, and the sheer volume of rubies flashing and garnets dangling off earlobes and blood-colored silks and velvets was staggering. Kitty wore her best dress, which was yellow and nowhere near stylish enough for a regular ball, never mind a Devil’s Night. But she was not a guest, rather part of the entertainment. Staff. Thankfully.

Strawberries floated in champagne; cherries oozed from tiny butter-crust pies. A sculpture of a naked demoness reclined over several gold platters, made of soft cheese dotted with pomegranate seeds. There were dozens of gaming tables, half as many billiards tables felted red instead of green, and a betting book to rival any club in London. Courtesans floated between the players offering encouragement from behind crimson, feathered masquerade masks.

Devil stood apart and aloof, watching from the balcony above like a hawk in a gilded nest. He wore black, not red, and though he did not circulate, did not even bother to greet the many patrons below, they all knew exactly who he was and where he stood for the entire evening. Heads turned in his direction between bad hands of cards and between good.

All of the guests orbited him, sending glimpses into shadows to find him: coy, angry, lustful, jealous, desperate.

He seemed bored but also violently aware of everything going on around him. His eyes had found her once: dark, direct, tracking her every movement as she unpacked a box of books currently banned in London. Also, poetry that was not fit to be read aloud in polite company. Her favorite kind. She had felt his gaze on her even with her back turned to the staircase, and when she turned to look up, something shivered inside her.

Something untoward. Alarming.

Something delicious.

She knew the stories, of course—that a wager made on Devil’s Night was subject to the Devil himself. He ensured every player made good on his or her debt, no matter the uniqueness of it or the consequences it might involve. She had heard of a duke who tried to renege and ended up losing his foot in the process. Kitty did not often put much stock in gossip. After all, gossip had her leading women in dark rites in the basement of her shop, where she may or may not also eat the hearts of men raw. There was something about orgies too.

As if there was space for that kind of thing in the basement of a London bookshop.

But in Devil’s case, the tales were too easy to believe.

But as she did not wager, she did not expect to come away from a Devil’s Night in any way changed, beyond in possession of a heavier purse from selling her wares. Hopefully enough to pay off some of her father’s more violent creditors, enough for an order of tea and mutton. One day, enough to secure her sister’s future. A dowry. Options .

Options were rather scarce on the ground for women in London. Unlike vicars, congregating on her front step and flapping their wings like disgruntled pigeons.

She had not expected the chance to change everything to arrive so swiftly.

Nor in the hands of the dangerously handsome, entirely too-riveting Devil.

More fool her.

That was the point of the Devil, wasn’t it? Temptation? Everyone gathered here tonight was tempted.

But there was also an undercurrent of fear to their attention.

Which was not Kitty’s concern.

Until he sent a man careening over the balustrade.

Entirely too near to her book table and entirely too near to her person. Books were fragile and not be abused. She did not know the man or what he deserved.

A moment earlier, that man had alternated between shouting and begging, his face red enough to match the décor. When he landed, he broke a side table with curved legs, a ship made entirely of glass, and probably several of his bones. To add insult to injury, a portrait fell off the wall behind him and nearly decapitated him. He groaned, nose crooked and bloody.

Someone screamed. But mostly, the guests watched him with morbid fascination, glad not to be on the receiving end. Just as glad to have a story to tell to those back home.

Devil only leaned on the railing, returning the stares until they all turned away with laughs meant to cover their discomfort.

Except for Kitty.

She continued to watch him, safe in her corner, unnoticed. Curious. Drawn to him despite herself.

The clock behind her was circled in a wreath of gilded laurel leaves, elegant and persistent as it ticked closer and closer to midnight. She felt a bit like Cinderella. Or would have, were she not more like a wicked stepsister in this particular tale.

But she would do anything to save her sister.

Even betray her friend.

Maybe.

Probably.

The clock continued to tick at her mockingly.

The time for betrayal came and went and she did not move. She could not. She had done too much harm already and could not stomach going any further. It had been a stupid, desperate plan anyway.

Not like her current plan.

Which, to be clear, was equally stupid and desperate, but far likelier to bring results.

She was still watching Devil when he slipped a folded piece of paper inside his pocket. She had not managed to figure out where the signed vowels were kept—too many of his men came and went. And then he vanished into the shadows.

Kitty was moving before she realized what she was doing, before she could stop herself.

She stepped over a splatter of blood, barely glanced at the groaning man who was being ignored by his friends and decidedly not ignored by Devil’s men. She slipped between gaming tables, around throngs of inebriated lords too bored to care that she was a spinster and too drunk to remember her by the time she had passed out of view. The music played by the orchestra continued to pour through the room, adding an edge to every roll of dice, every clack of a ball hitting another ball on the felt billiards table. It motivated her to keep going even though she should most definitely turn back.

Should make better choices.

Which would leave her sister to her fate.

Bollocks to that.

She’d happily climb into hell to save her sister. Or trip into it, as it were.

She quickened her pace, heading for the main formal staircase, which she had no business using as a bookseller hired to provide party favors. She ought to stick to the servant stairs in the back. But since the marquis had just been caught abducting women and hiding them in his cellar, Kitty was not too bothered with whether he considered her an uncouth upstart. More dark entertainment for a Devil’s Night.

She darted up the first step, the second, and then crashed right into Devil.

It was like bouncing off a mountain. A handsome, suspicious mountain who smelled very good. She tried to catch herself. She assumed he would be as pampered as the other earls she had seen with calf padding in their stockings and in the shoulders of their coats.

Not quite.

She tumbled, tripping over her own feet with a little more genuineness than she had planned. She half sprawled against the railing, the oak scrollwork digging into her shoulder blades. “I beg your pardon!” she said, rubbing at her elbow that had hit at just the wrong angle and sent painful tingles down her arm.

Devil looked down at her, aloof green eyes cold and distrustful. Knowing. Noticing every detail: her dress, which was her best but still nowhere near good enough, the ink on her fingers, which were gloveless because her gloves itched, her lack of rubies. Down to the mending at the top of her left stocking, which she knew on a rational level that he could not see through her skirts but which her body was entirely convinced was possible.

She had not thought being this close to him would affect her, even though his magnetism was palpable. A reaction to his presence was primal. Lions did not walk among gazelles without effect.

Kitty had never seen a gazelle, but she fancied she knew exactly how they felt.

Devil straightened his coat, checked his pockets. Satisfied that nothing was missing, he nodded at her once. He did not say a word, even as he reached down to grip her arm and pull her up.

And that was when she stole from the Devil himself.

Last night…

It had taken Devil nearly a month to find her. Him, a veritable devil, and she, a bookseller.

It was embarrassing.

Infuriating.

He who hosted extravagant evenings across England once a year, with every temptation and entertainment scattered like dandelions in a field. He held the bank and the vowels and no quarter was given on a Devil’s Night. No exceptions made. Not for king or duke or beautiful woman. God himself could lose a bet and Devil would find a way to make him pay.

All to one purpose.

Which had nothing to do with gambling or wagering or fortunes. Devil did not even particularly enjoy playing cards. But he did enjoy winning, and he enjoyed power most of all.

Like hell would he see it undone by a redheaded menace.

She had stolen from him.

Stealing from the Devil was not something that could be ignored. Admired, perhaps. If begrudgingly.

But not ignored.

Never ignored.

It was not a precedent he could afford to set. Even if the lady in question had snapping gray eyes and a very distracting trail of freckles.

Especially then.

They had exchanged a grand total of three polite sentences at the Devil’s Night hosted by the Marquis of Eastbourne, before the marquis was dragged away for keeping ladies in his cellar in order to control their fortunes. It had been both a duty and a true pleasure to help take him down. Though credit was mostly due to Lady Clara Prescott and her retired sea captain. Devil believed in proper credit. And debts paid. He had built his reputation on it. Fearsome, exacting, and without the need to defend it for the past few years, beyond the odd attempt on his life from some desperate gambler in over his head.

And now here he was in the dead of night, skulking through a bookshop that seemed to cater to the kinds of stories that were decidedly frowned upon for the good ladies of the ton . Ordinarily, he would have been impressed. Amused.

If he weren’t already so damned irritated.

The walls were the blue of a Scottish loch, details of the chipped plasterwork picked out in gold. They were not the only things gleaming in the uncertain light of the lampposts outside.

True to its name, the Golden Griffin Bookshop was full of griffins.

They prowled over the ceiling, curled in the corners, scales shimmering, teeth uncomfortably sharp for a place where the air was fragrant with lingering perfume and tea. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, whiskey.

He ducked behind the counter and into the back room, curtained off by drapes secured with enormous gold tassels better suited to the opera stage. She was a dramatic little thing, if nothing else. She liked monsters and naughty fairy tales.

He could be a monster.

She read lurid chapbooks, bit the ends of her pencils, and kept a tin of sugared violets under her desk. She also kept a neat ledger, he discovered, skimming the entrances for discrepancies, bribes, hints that she might be more than she seemed. Only someone with dark connections indeed could manage to steal from him. To pluck a vowel straight from his pocket. Many had attempted the ill-advised feat, but no one had ever succeeded.

Until Miss Caldecott.

It would not stand.

Even if she was exactly as she seemed: a pesky bookseller with an impish grin and a serious lack of self-preservation. Innocent.

It did not signify.

Miss Kitty Caldecott was his now.

Now

Kitty was not having a good day.

It had not started well, and then it had rapidly proceeded to get much worse.

Much worse.

Really, if she could harness the speed and momentum at which everything disintegrated, she could afford to buy a mansion in Mayfair. Twelve mansions. And then she would not be in the pickle she found herself in.

Through no fault of her own.

Mostly.

Partly.

She was not hopeful it would get better.

She had risen early, which was never a good way to start the day, in her estimation. Mornings were meant to pass by on the other side of her window, cheerful and requiring absolutely no input from her. It had been years since such a thing was possible, of course. But her bleary morning brain would not forget—pots of warmed chocolate brought to her bedside with a basket of cinnamon-dusted pastries were hard to forget. It had only been for one summer, when her father was given his title, and before he had gambled away his fortune.

She could do without new dancing slippers, as invitations to balls were not exactly forthcoming. She could go without the newest style of bonnet or ices from Gunter’s or weekly tickets to Vauxhall Gardens. She could do without visiting the modiste. As she had proven, daily, over the last very many years.

But that pot of chocolate proved harder to forgo.

Still, she had her bookshop, which brought her more joy than she could have dreamed. Griffin Bookshop catered to the unique reader: those who gravitated toward gothic romances, salacious novels, and wicked poetry, preferably written by ladies. She carried the regular fare, of course, but she had become known for her secret shelves, stacked with the kinds of stories the newspapers disdained because they were not morally improving. Even before the Devil’s Night.

Her wares were, truth be told, downright shocking. Just as she liked it. And it was all her own.

So, nothing to complain about, really.

But people who said there was nothing to complain about had very little imagination.

She did not wish to be the kind of person who whined at every little inconvenience, but when she found herself trapped on the roof of their rented house in her nightdress—in a storm, naturally—perhaps one or two complaints might be lodged with management. Posthaste.

If only she weren’t the management.

This is what came of mornings.

When dawn poked its sharp, bossy nose through her window, she ought to have pressed a pillow over her head. Instead, she stuffed her feet into her slippers, washed her face, grumbled, swore at a chair when she stubbed her toe, and then went to make breakfast for her younger sister Evie.

Evangeline, beautiful and kind, routinely woke as though butterflies lifted her from her bed—smiling, her hair in perfect waves and gold as the sun. Kitty would have said it was as gold as coins, but she had recently been accused of being sly and mercenary.

As the woman who oversaw the household accounts, however, and knew exactly how much sugar and tea cost, mercenary was not the insult it might once have been.

Although “sly” hit a nerve she did not wish to explore.

At any rate, there might not be pots of chocolate of a morning, but there would be honey for toasted bread. And butter. One day. Soon.

“You’re grumbling to yourself again,” Evie pointed out.

“I’m reciting poetry, if you must know,” Kitty lied. She did not want to worry her sister, who was nineteen years old and ought to have been enjoying a truly spectacular come-out, dancing until dawn, gathering posies and truly awful sonnets written about her nose.

“Most poems do not use those words, and certainly not in that order,” Evie pointed out.

“Well, not the interesting ones, anyway.” Kitty stubbed her toe again, a bruise upon a bruise. “Arsemonkeys.”

“That’s a new one.”

“Shut your ears.”

“Not on your life,” Evie returned cheerfully. She hurried to steady the tray Kitty had brought her, teacup wobbling precariously. “You know you don’t have to bring me breakfast, Kitty. I’m perfectly capable of fetching it for myself.”

“I have to bring Aunt P her tray anyway.” Kitty shrugged and nearly upended the coddled eggs slipping across the plate.

“I can do that too.”

“You have been doing that,” Kitty reminded her. “While I’ve been at the shop. I just happened to wake up early today.” She did not add that it was worry that woke her, as it always did. Lord knew their father did not worry. At least not in any way that was productive. Having Aunt Priscilla peruse the gossip papers and parading Evie up and down Rotten Row every afternoon hoping to catch the attention of a single man of good fortune was not particularly useful.

Last month, the woman had bodily shoved Evie into the path of an earl’s oncoming carriage in the hopes that something might come of it. Something like a marriage proposal.

Instead, Evie had turned her knee. She might have died.

“Have the Four Horsemen arrived in London?” Evie asked.

“That’s a bit grim, even for you. It’s early but hardly the apocalypse.” Evie might look like an angel, but she had a wicked streak as wide as Kitty’s. Everything else about her was softer, though, and so people did not notice. Kitty was not soft. There was no time for softness.

If only she could convince the burning in her esophagus that she had everything in hand.

“When Kitty Caldecott willingly rises before the sun, it is dark days indeed.” Evie snorted. “Literally and metaphorically.”

Kitty could not argue with that.

“Have you taken Papa his breakfast yet?”

“No, it’s still in the hall.” As she had lovely daydreams of upending the lot over his head, she had opted to wait. Anyway, Evie did not deserve cold, congealed eggs but he certainly did.

It occurred to Kitty, not the first time, that she was not the forgiving sort.

“I’ll do it.” Evie shrugged into her wrapper. Her long, honey-hued curls fell in a delightful tangle down her back. It hardly needed saying that Kitty had woken to a bird’s nest on top of her own head.

“You did it yesterday. And the day before that. Not to mention you have been waiting on Aunt Priscilla, and that is unjust punishment.”

“She gets cross when her tea is tepid.”

“Her tea could be made with the burning coals of hellfire and she would still find it tepid enough to be cross over.”

Taking Aunt Priscilla her morning tray should not have been a harrowing experience. And yet Kitty had drunk an entire pot of strong tea down in the kitchen just to wake herself up enough to manage carrying it up the stairs, never mind dealing with her aunt. Neither was at their best before noon and avoided each other by tacit agreement. Actually, it was more of a peace treaty brokered by Evie for the good of the rest of the household. And the state of the crockery. Her aunt tended to throw things when she was vexed. As had Kitty’s mother before she died, only they had never noticed the loss of objects then. They were always cleaned up and replaced as though by magic. Her father still had his fortune then.

Alas.

“I’ll take it,” Kitty sighed. “I deserve it.” She muttered the last, but Evie heard her.

“Bloody bollocks to that, Kitty Caldecott.”

Kitty feigned shock, mostly so she could not be pressed to explain herself. “Where did you even learn such words?”

“From you, of course.”

“Shocking lies.”

Absolute truth.

She had not known that word, or any interesting ones really, when she was nineteen years old.

Also untrue.

She had absolutely known them, only she had never spoken them aloud where someone might hear her. She certainly would not have dared to lecture a country vicar in his late seventies on the etymology of such words, as she had done just yesterday.

Sometimes, being a spinster had its advantages.

Rarely, it had to be said. But still. One took one’s entertainment where one could. And if such a man felt at ease to come into her shop to lecture her on her supposedly loose morals, she could lecture him right back. Especially as he had not purchased a single item.

Flinging his toupee into the muddy street may have been taking things a touch too far.

But she would do it again. He had insisted women should be silent. So she had been silent. Mostly. She might leave off the slightly maniacal laugh next time. Oh, who was she fooling? The laugh was what made self-righteous curmudgeons who insisted on marching into her shop in high dudgeon sweat. It was her bread and butter. Especially now that they could not always afford bread or butter.

It wasn’t her shop accounts or the disdain of the clergy or even the state of their household ledger that sent a bolt of cold dread down her spine.

It wasn’t her secrets, her bad decisions, the prospect of what Evie would think of her.

Of the consequences surely chasing her, even now.

It was none of those things.

It was a simple knock at the door, too early in the morning.

Especially when their father answered it with a nervous, falsely jovial laugh. “Lord Portsmouth, how good to see you.”

Evie froze. Kitty met her gaze.

“Bollocks,” they said in unison.