Chapter Two
K itty peered out of the window down to the street below and cursed.
Deeply.
Blasphemously.
The vicar would have fainted at her feet before she even plucked the badger-fur toupee from his head.
Evie’s eyes widened. “I shall have to remember that one.”
“Best not. We can only afford one family disgrace,” Kitty said wryly, despite her heart beating in her throat where it had no business being. “Find your own scandal.”
Evie snorted a laugh even though there was no time for it. But they always managed to find a way to make each other laugh. Kitty had made a game of their dispossession all those years ago.
Evie frowned through the glass. “That’s odd. Why did Lord Portsmouth bring a second carriage?”
Kitty’s heart thrummed again, momentarily choking her. She swallowed down the fear, shoving it out of the way so she could breathe. So she could think . “I believe he has forgone the courtship altogether.”
Evie shivered. “What does that mean?”
“It means that it is your trunk I see being carried out by his outrider.” A flutter in Kitty’s chest, this time mostly fueled by rage. An improvement. She could do many more impossible things with rage.
“Who has that many outriders while in London?” Evie said slowly.
“Those intending on traveling all the way to Gretna Green, if I were to hazard a guess.” Outriders were used for trips into the country where any manner of inconvenience might be found, from highwaymen to broken carriage wheels.
Evie sucked in a breath. “Father is letting him abduct me to Scotland? For an anvil wedding? Surely not.”
“Definitely Aunt P’s idea. So that your reputation will be ruined before you even arrive and you will have no choice.” If Kitty was mercenary, her aunt was downright ruthless. And their father capitulated, as always.
Kitty had never truly hated her family before, not really. She was perilously close at the moment.
Another reason she was nowhere near as good as her sister. But let her sister be the kind one, the good one. In the meantime, Kitty would set both carriages on fire.
Gleefully.
“I won’t marry him,” Evie said quietly.
“Too right, you won’t,” Kitty agreed. “For one thing, I have every intention of committing murder before that ever happens.”
“Perhaps we might start with running away,” Evie said with the same dry tone she had learned from Kitty. She pulled a small valise form under her bed.
“How long have you had that packed?” Kitty asked, pride shoving her heart back down into her chest where it belonged. Evie was not a little girl anymore. And she was so much more astute than anyone gave her credit for.
“Since Aunt P pushed me in front of that carriage.”
They exchanged a grim smile. “Well done, you,” Kitty said, shoving down the guilt and frustration over not doing a better job at protecting her sister. The anger she felt at her father for not being stronger, her aunt kinder. “Hurry.”
Evie might be kind and beautiful, with a voice soft as kitten feet, but she was also the untidiest person Kitty had ever met. She had seen overturned carts in Covent Garden that were better organized.
In this case, it at least offered a cloak draped over a plant slowly suffocating under the resulting lack of sunlight. There were no longer any housemaids to tidy up after them. There had not been for a couple of years now. Though Kitty had made a reasonable success of her grandmother’s bookshop, despite her mother’s insistence that their history in trade was something to sweep under the rug posthaste, it was still not enough to allow them the same luxuries as their previous fortune had briefly done. When their mother died, their father had no one to temper his gambling.
And as it turned out, he was not particularly good at it. He was too trusting. Too desperate.
The bookshop was the only thing that had saved them from outright ruin. Along with selling everything they owned of any value. Except for the diamonds and pearls that Aunt P hid from creditors and gaming hell thugs in places Kitty had no wish to consider.
“Put this on.” Kitty shoved the thick velvet at Evie. She could practically hear the plant gasping for breath as it was freed. “There’s no time for you to get dressed.” Not with two carriages waiting outside. And not with their father employing that particular laugh before nine o’clock in the morning. The one that clearly heralded he was in over his head. Floundering.
Her blood chilled.
“You’ll have to go out the window.”
“Not again.” Evie hastened to tie the cloak ribbons around the neck.
“Aunt P has already found all of our hiding spots,” Kitty replied. Evie darted away in the opposite direction of the window. “Hurry!”
“I can’t leave Galahad behind. She will never remember to feed him. Especially not crickets—she thinks it’s disgusting.”
“It’s a little disgusting,” Kitty allowed. They crunched. She always felt sorry for them. “I’ll feed your pincushion.”
“You’re always at the shop,” Evie replied stubbornly. “I’m not leaving him behind.”
Which was how Kitty ended up shoving her baby sister and a confused hedgehog in a gold cage out of a top-floor window.
As far as escape routes went, it was not ideal. Even before it started to rain.
But it was better than the alternative.
The alternative being Lord Portsmouth.
The window was safely shut and Kitty was hurrying across the carpet when their aunt appeared in the doorway. Aunt Priscilla was a tiny, imposing woman with fair hair streaked silver. It was clear which side of the family Evie had inherited her delicate bone structure and glowing skin. Kitty’s red hair and freckles came from their father’s side.
Aunt Priscilla might be no bigger than a minute, but she was all teeth. All of the time.
“Kitty, what are you doing in here?” No one stood against Mrs. Priscilla Bartley for long, annuity or not.
Except for Kitty.
“I was bringing Evie her breakfast, Aunt P.”
Aunt Priscilla narrowed her eyes. Kitty held her gaze, raising one eyebrow. An entire battle of wills occurred during that one silent moment, complete with bloodshed and betrayal. But never surrender. Never that.
“Lord Portsmouth is here for your sister.”
“It’s barely nine in the morning.”
“I didn’t ask you for the time. Get your sister.”
“It’s rather gauche, such an early call, don’t you think?” She only said it to needle her aunt.
Aunt P’s right eye twitched. Direct hit. “Don’t keep him waiting.”
“She’s not here,” Kitty said.
“I beg your pardon?” Her aunt’s voice was sharper than Galahad’s spikes.
“Evie is not here,” Kitty repeated.
“Where the devil is she?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I came in and she was gone.”
“A likely story. There’s a devil here, and it’s you.”
“I’m not the one trying to shove her into that blackguard’s carriage.”
“Hush, you silly chit. He’ll hear you.”
“Good. Because you cannot be serious. He’s vile .”
“He’s an earl. ” As if that forgave anything. Everything. For her aunt, it did. “And don’t call me Aunt P—it’s vulgar.”
“He’s had three wives who all died within a year of the wedding!”
Kitty was quite serious about burning down those carriages. She would prefer to wait until Lord Portsmouth was inside, but she would also happily go out and do it right now and save everyone the bother.
Her aunt caught her arm, painfully digging nails into her skin. “You are not Evangeline’s guardian.”
“I wish I was. I would never sell her.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Rumors, gossip. It means nothing. The lower classes always talk.”
Coming from a woman who wielded gossip like a sword. And had come from the very same lower classes.
“ Three dead wives is not idle chatter.”
“Childbirth is dangerous.”
“One of them drowned.”
“So is swimming.”
“She drowned in a very shallow pond.” Kitty wanted to scream.
“We need him, Kitty,” Aunt P said. “He does not care about her lack of dowry and has offered us a proper townhouse in St. James’s Square. St. James’s Square. And he has been nothing but courteous to your sister. And to me. He thinks she is beautiful. Angelic.”
“We don’t need him,” Kitty said stubbornly.
“The only gold we have left to our name is your sister’s hair.”
“Evie deserves better.”
“We all do,” Aunt P said bitterly. “Tell that to your father and his debts.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Kitty asked as the rain tapped at the window. “She’s not here.”
She could not wait much longer to follow Evie. The roof would turn slippery, and Evie’s knee was still healing. By the end of most days she needed a cane to support herself, despite their aunt shrieking about it interfering with the line of her gowns. Evie had wrapped it with white silk roses in a kind of compromise. Kitty made a note to take it from where it was poking out from under the bed. Galahad liked to bat at the flowers, and he was stronger than a little ball of spikes had any right to be. Kitty had once found the cane halfway down the stairs by tripping over it and nearly breaking her entire body. Perhaps that might work on Lord Portsmouth.
“I shall find an excuse,” Aunt Priscilla hissed. “ While you find your sister. ”
“Of course, Aunt P.”
Her aunt narrowed her eyes, clearly suspicious.
Fair enough.
Kitty wouldn’t have believed her either.
Devil ought to have sent one of his men to do this work.
He did not often break into shops or skulk through early morning gardens. Anymore, that was.
But Miss Caldecott intrigued him.
Even if the gold paint from one of her bloody griffins had already proven impossible to scrub out of his cuff. His valet would make that noise in the back of his throat, like a peacock caught in a storm.
And now here Devil was, leaning against a tree, rain dripping all around him.
He could be wrapped in silk sheets and softer skin, awake because he’d had too good a time to sleep—not awake because he was hunting a sly fox of a woman.
He refused to acknowledge the fact that this gray morning was already proving to be more interesting than his usual pursuits. That there was a shot of excitement he had not felt in too long. Opulence, risks, beauty. He had gorged on it.
This was something else.
Curiosity and another twinge of some emotion he could not—or would not—name kept him where he was.
Watching her.
Hunting.
He paused. Cursed.
Why was the bloody woman on the roof?