Chapter Eight
S tealing from Devil had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Very well, it was always a bad idea, but anything was better than Portsmouth marrying her sister and then murdering her when he grew tired of her. Or keeping her locked up if she gave him sons enough to secure his lineage.
But Kitty had not imagined stealing a scrap of paper would make things worse . She was the last kind of woman a man like Devil would notice. He had beauties falling at his feet, elegant women, charming men, all begging for his attention. Kitty would have much preferred to disappear, thank you very much.
Too late for that now, alas.
And none of it mattered, not as long as Evie was safe.
“Oaths haven’t been sealed with a kiss since Henry VI,” she blurted out. “Since the Black Plague.”
Why did she keep saying things out loud? With her mouth?
“Fascinating,” Devil said, and it mostly did not sound like an insult. “Let me guess, you read about it in a book?”
He had no idea the kinds of books she read.
“At least that is a travesty we can rectify. History must be preserved, after all. We owe it to king and country.”
She knew what he was doing. He did not really want to kiss her. He only wanted her flustered. Confused. Vulnerable.
Well, she would show him.
She curled her fingers into the fine material of his coat and yanked him forward. Taken off guard, he let her. It was the only explanation, seeing as she was a good foot shorter than he was and several stone lighter, even soft as she was. He was all muscle and sin and taunts you knew you should not answer, no matter how tempting they were.
He thought she would flinch away if he kissed her.
So she would kiss him.
It had been some time. She did not fool herself into thinking a single kiss from a short bookseller with old lettuce on her shoes would turn his world upside down. She had stolen kisses as a girl and a great deal more since then—she was a spinster; she wasn’t dead . But there was no time for a dalliance when your father was busy ruining the family. And lately the men she met were more interested in throwing rotten vegetables at her door. It was not exactly flattering.
No matter. This kiss was not about allure or desire. It was merely a battle in the war. A surprise attack.
Which did not mean she could not enjoy it.
She would be an absolute idiot not to. Such chances did not come along every day. For Devil, they no doubt did, but for her?
Never.
She pushed up on her tiptoes before she lost her nerve. She kissed him lightly, teasingly, with a tiny lick over his bottom lip. But also haltingly, because part of her was waiting for him to shove her away, to laugh. To do anything but kiss her back.
He froze for a brief moment that nearly demolished her resolve, not to mention any shred of self-confidence.
And then he kissed her back.
Oh, how he kissed her back.
She’d already thought she was in over her head. There was no doubt about it now. Not with his clever hands in her hair, tightening, tugging her head back to hold her where he wanted her. Finding just the right angle to take her mouth like it belonged to him. He kissed her as if he had all the time in the world, so deeply and so thoroughly, her knees actually went soft. She had thought they only did that in the books she read.
When he tangled his tongue with hers, licking deep, she made a tiny sound, a whimper that would have embarrassed her if she were not already desperate for more. More of his mouth, more of his hands tight in her hair keeping her still when the world buffeted her from every side. More of him.
She had known he would be good at this. Objectively.
But she had not realized how it would affect her. How it would start fires in her belly, soften the muscles of her inner thighs, send heat streaking throughout her whole body, even the parts he was not touching. Why wasn’t he touching them? All of her? Everywhere. Anywhere.
He controlled the moment, her responses. The kiss she had started was his to finish. She was used to being the one who started everything and ended everything. Opening the shop in the morning, emptying the hearth at night. Hiding her sister from creditors and bullies and earls.
For one long, blessed moment there was nothing to do but give in.
Nothing to do but chase pleasure. Not even chase it, only meet it when it was given to her. She did not know what she had expected from Devil: expertise definitely, but also smugness. Maybe boredom with her, nonchalance. Power.
But there was only hunger and need and the way their bodies met, even with the layers of clothing between them. He was hot and hard and demanded every single bit of her attention. She gave it gladly, catching her breath when she remembered breathing was necessary, resenting it for breaking the tangle of their tongues. He nipped at her lower lip, and she felt it in her nipples and all the way down into her womb.
He grasped her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. His eyes glittered in the blue light of dusk. For a wild, beautiful moment, it was all that mattered. There was no theft, no debt, no sister hiding in a house in Mayfair.
“We have a deal, Miss Caldecott,” Devil said. “Don’t forget it.”
As if she could. She was more likely to forget her own name.
Kitty Caldecott had kissed the Devil. What was more, he had kissed her back.
It was embarrassingly difficult to concentrate on the mundane tasks of getting on with her day, but the Ladies’ Novel Society met once a month come hell or high water.
Come vicar or Devil.
Kitty was quite sure the society would break down the door were she not there to answer it. It had become tradition.
And at the moment, she could not afford to break tradition. Both literally and figuratively.
And she could not relive the feel of Devil’s mouth on hers forever. The slide of his tongue. She ought to have known he would kiss like that. Devilishly .
She had work to do. She would start with opening a window, because why was it so warm in here?
The front door opened, the bells jingling cheerfully. The sound door anchored her to the moment: her shop, her favorite books, readers who were as invested as she was in the lives of fictional characters. This mattered too.
First to arrive was Miss Peridot, elderly and rotund. “Why is it so cold in here?” She was eating a raw onion, as usual. Someone had told her when she was very young that onions kept the mind sharp. Miss Peridot very much liked her brain. She knew too many people her age who became addled or confused. And her age was none of your concern, thank you kindly.
Miss Cecelia Xavier and Miss Anne Sutcliffe followed, friends who had debuted together years ago and found each other much more amusing than any of their gentleman prospects. Lady Susanna, whose husband was very dashing and escorted her to the shop, greeted everyone with a tip of his hat and returned to collect her when she was ready to go home. Miss Hastings hid furtively under her cloak, which was not unusual for new members. Her hair was lightly powdered, turning it an undistinguishable color.
Kitty had hoped that the woman the Andovers had chased away might come back.
On the bright side, no one else returned with questionable cabbages or noxious eggs.
This was home for Kitty. Truly home. All that was missing was Evie sitting next to her with her needlework, making wry comments that always took people by surprise.
“Where’s Galahad?” Cecelia asked, pulling her knitting from her basket.
Galahad was also a treasured member of the circle. More than once it had been suggested that he be the president. As the actual president, Kitty decided not to take offense. It was difficult to compete with a hedgehog who rolled into a ball, leaving only his tiny nose poking out.
“And Miss Evangeline, of course.”
Kitty grinned when Victoria snorted. Everyone loved Evie, but even she could not compete with her hedgehog.
“She’s feeling a bit under the weather,” Kitty said.
“She needs raw onions in vinegar,” Miss Peridot announced. “I’ll leave you one.”
“That’s very kind.”
“Bah.”
As Kitty wasn’t sure how to respond to that, she offered everyone biscuits topped with strawberry jam. The book they had borrowed from her circulating library sat on a small table, well read. Kitty sincerely hoped it did not smell like onions.
“I admit, I fancied Lord Buchanan,” Miss Xavier said.
“Cecilia, he’s a villain!”
“He’s simply misunderstood,” Cecilia insisted stubbornly.
“He stabbed a man.”
“One time.”
“Twice!”
“But he did that…bare chested.” Cecilia dropped her voice reverently. “And because that other chap disrespected his love.”
“But she does not love him back.”
“Of course she does,” Miss Peridot said. “She’s not an idiot. Merely a little slow.”
Kitty exchanged a grin with Victoria. This was her favorite part—when everyone grew heated, forgetting these characters only existed in a book. But that wasn’t strictly true, was it? They existed here, in this moment, in their imaginations. They became a part of their lives and of the stories they told themselves.
“That heroine is a cabbagehead,” Victoria declared, mostly because she enjoyed the way Lady Susanna turned faintly purple when she disagreed.
“She is young,” Lady Susanna said. “She’ll find her courage.”
“Let us hope she does so before Lord Buchanan razes a village to the ground. I do love a grumpy laird.”
“I prefer the stable lad, at any rate,” Miss Peridot announced. “He has burly thighs.”
Miss Hastings blinked. She was not accustomed to literary salons mentioning thighs, burly or otherwise.
“I hope someone writes about a Viking hero soon.” Victoria winked. “Because I also prefer burly thighs.”
Miss Hastings made a strangled sound that may or may not have been a giggle.
“Still not as delicious as Lord Drake,” Victoria continued.
“Not the vampire again,” Miss Sutcliffe said. “I don’t care for heroes who cannot have a picnic in the sunshine.”
“It’s England.” Lady Susanna shrugged. “There’s never any sunshine anyway.”
“Perfect for a vampire,” Kitty agreed. The Vampire and His Lady was not nearly as racy as the chapbooks that it had inspired. But it was so popular, it paid her shop assistant’s salary. It was so popular, in fact, that even a year after it was first published, Kitty regularly gave sold-out walking tours of the places in London featured in the story.
“But imagine all the history he has seen!” Lady Susanna replied. “The stories he would have.”
“I’m more interested in his thighs,” Victoria said. “Miss Peridot?”
“Definitely.” Miss Peridot grinned. “And think of the many years he has had to practice.”
That strangled sound from Miss Hastings again.
“Have we shocked you?” Kitty asked quietly. Invitations were required for this particular salon, but Kitty did not remember her. She must have been recommended by another member.
Miss Hastings shook her head. “I haven’t read The Vampire and his Lady yet.”
A truly shocked silence greeted that pronouncement. The kind of shock not elicited by burly thighs or ravishing rakehells or even that one book with the sea monster.
“You haven’t?” Cecilia ceased knitting immediately, as though an emergency was occurring right under her nose. “Truly?”
Miss Hastings shook her head.
“Well, that won’t do,” Miss Peridot said. “I’ll lend you my copy.”
“Do you mean the copy you have yet to return to the circulating library?” Victoria asked smoothly. “Thereby making the circulating bit rather difficult.”
“Bah. You have three more copies.”
As they bickered fondly and Miss Peridot promised Miss Hastings that her life was about to change forever, Lady Susanna’s husband came to collect his wife just before fisticuffs threatened to break out between the others over who was more fierce, Lord Buchanan or Lord Drake.
Kitty sat back in her chair, feeling hopeful for the first time that day. Let the Temple of Muses keep its treatises and tracts and biographies of well-traveled men. She would choose this every time.
Naughty books and naughty ladies.
She was still not quite ready to go home and face her aunt by the time the salon had dispersed, and so she dragged the box of gold paint and brushes out to the pavement. The side wall could use another griffin to join the one she had painted with her grandfather’s enormous and affronted mustache. After her visit from the vicar and his indignant wife, she deserved another griffin.
Perhaps it was a silly tradition, but it made her feel better. Heartened. Marking the battles she refused to lose and the sense of humor she refused to sacrifice to sad people with no sense of whimsy and an abhorrent lack of tolerance. She could whine and worry and nurse her wounds, or she could paint a griffin.
She chose the griffin, as always.
She also liked to keep the shop surreptitiously open late at least one night of the week. Those who needed help came to know what it meant when she lit that particular candle in that particular window. Safety. Secrecy. A referral to the Spinster Society or the house just outside Covent Garden. A place to hide, if only for an hour.
She was proud of her little shop and the community that had gathered around it, however furtively. She would not see it fall to placards and moldy potatoes thrown from carriages. She knew what it felt like to be without options. After her father lost his fortune as suddenly as he made it, and before her grandmother passed the shop to her, Kitty had spent too many sleepless nights trying to find a way to protect her sister. To hide her from the creditors, to feed her more than once a day. To fend off Evie’s first marriage proposal at the age of fifteen.
She’d hidden Evie in the back cupboard of the shop and then hidden all of her father’s snuffboxes (which he believed were lucky) for good measure until he refused the offer.
She’d painted her first griffin that day, on the floor in front of the cupboard. Her grandmother had taken one long, hard, searching look at her and then promptly announced she was moving to the seaside and Kitty was in charge.
Kitty propped her small ladder against the wall, smiling. That first month had been a whirlwind of ten-page letters (crosshatched twice and nearly impossible to decipher) sent almost daily to her from her grandmother, full of advice and threats. Kitty had kept them all, even though she had spent more time at the shop than at home and already knew every corner of the business.
She added gold paint in a thick layer, trying not to dwell on the last time she had done this. Clara had helped her, and they drank too much truly awful wine and stale cake the shop next door could not sell and shouted about books until the very early hours of the morning.
Tonight, it was her and the griffin, who was slightly cross-eyed. For some reason, all of her griffins turned out slightly cross-eyed.
Her, the griffin, and a young man running in her direction.
His coat was askew, there was a bruise on his face and blood on his collar points. He was panting, trying to keep running but not having much success. From her vantage point, Kitty saw the three other men chasing him, shouting. One of them waved a bottle of port. They had the air of indulged firstborn sons.
“Duck into the alley,” Kitty said to the gentleman they were chasing, even though his buttons were gold and he’d likely never set foot in an alley in his entire life. “Back door of the bookshop is open.”
He glanced at her, sweat and blood staining his intricate cravat. He wheezed something that might have been “thank you” before stumbling into the alley.
“Where did he go?” the first of his pursuers shouted. None of the other pedestrians did much except for getting out of their way. When the Mayfair lords came looking for trouble, the rest of the neighborhood knew to turn a blind eye and hope they were not the next target. No one here could afford to go up against an enraged duke or a bored marquis’s son.
“Can’t be far, the ponce.”
“I don’t care who his brother is; we’re dumping him in the Thames. I knew he frequented that molly house.”
They were drunk, wealthy, privileged. Cruel.
All of her least favorite things.
They thundered toward her. Her ladder shook, not the sturdiest at the best of times. Pity.
It took barely a nudge for the pot of gold paint to tumble off the step. Right onto their heads.
The howling was exquisite.
She climbed down to a safer height in case they came for her, and then gasped. Rather theatrically, if she had to be honest. She did not think she had much of a career waiting for her on Drury Lane. She was, however, very accustomed to facing off against bullies, as a woman who was both overlooked and besieged. Somehow at the same time.
Also as a spinster.
She widened her eyes and teetered dangerously. “Oh!”
Gold paint dripped off a patrician nose. Landed on a polished boot that cost more than half her circulating library stock put together. Was spat onto the pavement.
It was all of the paint she had and was going to cost a fortune to replace. Someone across the street laughed. “You scared me!” Kitty said before the trio could react to the laugh, which in her experience never improved matters.
“You little—” The taller one took a threatening step closer, then wobbled, too much port in his system and too much paint in his left eye.
“I’m so sorry.” Kitty fluttered her hands helplessly. “You ran into me!”
“Where is he?”
“Who? Oh dear, here let me help you.” She waved a rag soaked with spirit of turpentine, which she used to clean her brushes right under their noses. They recoiled as one.
The taller one gagged. “Get off.”
“It will get the paint off your face.” And it would burn like hell. Serve them right.
“Never mind her—let’s go, before this stains my coat.” Too late.
“It’s in my hair.”
They hurried away, and Kitty watched them until they were out of view. Her startled, concerned expression turned sharp. “Mayfair jackasses.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.” Their victim hovered in the mouth of the alley, wielding a broken plank from a packing box. His left eye was already swelling and roughly the color of a boiled beet. The wall was holding most of his weight. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Kitty said. “Come inside and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
“I couldn’t…”
“They might double back. I would not put their getting lost past them in their state.”
He winced, lowering his makeshift weapon. “True.”
Kitty helped him inside to the corner by the coal grate, where she kept supplies for just this sort of thing: comfrey for poultices, bandages, vinegar. A small bottle of gin that tasted remarkably like the vinegar.
He sat with a groan. “Aren’t you going to ask my name?”
“Not as a rule, no,” she replied, pouring water into a dish and handing it to him with a clean strip of cloth. “Here, it will hurt less if you wash the blood off by yourself.” She turned him toward the cracked mirror.
He wiped at his face, poking at the mess of colors blooming above his eye. “I’ve heard of this place,” he said, quietly. “I didn’t know if you’d be open so late.”
“Sometimes I am.”
“You heard what they said about me.”
She lifted her chin. “Makes no difference to me whom you love, and it says more about them than about you.”
He blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. You are not the first to find his way here for that reason.”
“You can’t just go about dumping paint on Mayfair lords like that.”
“Can and shall. Anyway, to see you leaving a molly house would place him at the molly house too, wouldn’t it?”
He opened his mouth, shut it. “You ought to be a barrister. Better yet, a judge.” His smile turned sly. “But really, the molly house part is less what got under his skin. It’s more that I also stole his lady’s attention last week.” He flinched, working his jaw. “Goddamn it, that hurts.”
“I draw the line at pulling teeth,” Kitty informed him. Not only would she likely cast up her accounts, but he was in good enough spirits and seemed the type to prefer a joke over a pat on the head. He wasn’t in dire straits and could certainly afford to pay for a dentist. She had been a convenient port in the storm and was glad for that. It made everything else bearable.
“Thank you,” he said again. “Truly.”
“I’m happy to help.”
An hour later and Kitty had probably avoided going home long enough. Her still slightly-inebriated but at least no-longer-bleeding-all-over-himself guest had left, and she had put away the ladder and her brushes. There was nothing left to do except walk home.
And relive every moment of that blasted kiss now that there was nothing left to distract her.
The feel of Devil pressed up against her. His breath in her mouth, his fingers gripping the back of her neck, keeping her still for his taking.
What was locking the money box, and then walking down the street now crowded with more young men getting ready to carouse? What was any of it compared to the thrill of being kissed by Devil?
She was being a goose. A kiss did not change anything, not really. It secured her aid. It got Devil what he wanted: the wager she had safely hidden in the jar with her paintbrushes. She moved it daily: in the sugar canister, now mostly empty, under the plant in the back parlor, inside Galahad’s bag of carrots when he was not satisfied with the bugs hunted in the commons. Inside her best Christmas hat. Inside her shoe, more often than not.
She would keep the kiss the same way: a memory that moved around too fast for reality to touch. A small thing just for her.
She allowed herself to feel his mouth claiming hers again, to relish the strength of his crowding her against the table, the hitch in his breath. It was hers the whole length of her walk home.
And then she was Kitty Caldecott again. Sister, daughter, niece. Embarrassment to the family.
In a house drafty in the winter with lack of coal for the grates, with most of the rooms empty of furniture that had been sold and faded squares on the walls where paintings had been taken down. Except for a seascape that covered the damage left by a man who stopped by to collect money owed to his gaming hell.
They had one small parlor left for use, because her father still fancied himself a baron with a baron’s lifestyle, still gentry enough to be called upon by wealthy merchants if not the aristocracy proper. And because Aunt Priscilla was determined to act as though she were a duchess until someone made it so. They both sat by the window, only two candles burning for light when once there was a forest of beeswax tapers with little notice to the cost.
“Where is your sister?” Aunt Priscilla demanded as soon as she saw Kitty. Her cheeks were red, a clear indication that she was in high dudgeon and had been for some time.
“Isn’t she here?” Kitty asked innocently.
“Don’t play the fool with me.”
The trouble was that Aunt Priscilla was also so much more clever than Kitty’s father. She could spot a lie, a weakness, inside a mere hesitation. And she descended on it like a hawk on its supper. There would be blood and feathers in the parlor before bedtime.
“Are you listening to me?” Aunt Priscilla seethed. “We need her back in this house this instant!”
“No.” Kitty did not know what else to say that had not already been said. “Father is the one with the debt—he can pay the price. Not Evie.”
Her father, soft, gentle, and often bewildered, looked as though he might cry. He sniffled once. Kitty could not let it soften her. He was always sorry. Genuinely sorry. For a little while.
And it never made a difference. Not really.
There was always another wager, another debt. The only reason the bookshop was still running was because her grandmother technically still owned it. She was in a seaside cottage, not dead—as she liked to remind everyone, usually through summons to visit her and odd packages of pulled taffy and seashell art sent as gifts. Kitty missed her fiercely. Granny demanded the accounts be sent to her so that she had something good to read, along with every story written by the Nightingale.
“These aren’t like the others,” her father said miserably. “These are not gentlemen, poppet.”
The man who had punched a hole through their wall had not been a gentleman either. He had looked at Evie as though she were chattel to be bartered or taken. That was when Kitty had first started to find hiding holes for her sister. The gentlemen that followed suit, it had to be said, were no better. Not one whit.
“Evie is not coming home,” Kitty said firmly. “Find another way.”
“There is no other way,” Aunt Priscilla said with all the resonance of a funeral bell. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?”
“I’ll find one.” Kitty rubbed at her breastbone. She wished she were back at the shop—back on the rooftops, even. Anywhere but here. She’d considered convincing her grandmother to sell the shop, but she knew even if they sold every single book and tract and every shelf down to the fastenings, it would not be nearly enough. And her father had other debts that needed paying.
Kitty wanted to scream.
Followed by a strong cup of tea and an entire strawberry cake. And wine.
Instead, a knock sounded at the door.
She gave very serious consideration to crawling under the settee and staying there until whoever it was went away. They never did. She knew that from long experience.
As they did not have a butler, nor a housekeeper, Kitty answered the summons, the usual anxiety swirling in her stomach. Another collector? Someone more violent than the last? What story could she spin to buy them time? What promise? What lie?
But it was worse than a debt collector with a smug smile and an iron pipe in hand.
It was Lord Portsmouth.
She would take the iron pipe over the perfumed pomade, the entitled ennui, the cold entitlement in his eyes. An iron pipe might be reasoned with, might be bought off, eventually.
Kitty tried to smile like a woman who was not hiding her little sister. “Lord Portsmouth.”
He looked down his nose at her. There was cruelty under the cold beauty, an utter disregard of consequences because he had never had to grapple with them. “Miss Caldecott.”
When she did not immediately move out of his way, nor invite him inside, his mouth tightened with annoyance. The kind of noble annoyance that razed a village because it blocked the view of the river from the ancestral manor. His dead ancestors all rolled in their graves at once over her insolence.
“Kitty, for heaven’s sake,” Aunt Priscilla snapped, followed by her best smile in Lord Portsmouth’s direction. “Let the earl in. Where are your manners?”
Kitty stepped aside.
“Would you care for some tea?” Aunt Priscilla led the way to the parlor. “Kitty, ring the bell,” she added, even though there was no one to ring the bell for.
“Claret,” Lord Portsmouth demanded. “I’m on my way to my club,” he said to Kitty’s father, who had risen with a jovial, if nervous, smile. All his smiles had been nervous since Kitty’s mother had succumbed to that winter fever. “Where is your daughter? I don’t like having my plans disregarded. We ought to be married already.”
“Of course, of course,” the baron agreed. Sweat gathered at his hairline.
Aunt Priscilla shot him an irritated glare before turning back to the earl. “I do apologize, my lord. You know how girls get. Evangeline wanted everything to be perfect.”
“Where is she?”
Aunt Priscilla glanced at Kitty, who stayed silent. Her aunt forced a laugh. “The little minx has gone to Paris, can you believe it?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Surely Lord Portsmouth was aware that they could not afford a trip to the other end of London, never mind Paris . Evie had no dowry, for heaven’s sake.
“She wanted a trousseau fit for a countess,” Aunt Priscilla pressed on. “Something you would be proud of. She won’t be but a fortnight.”
A trousseau ? Evie had a single hedgehog to her name.
“I don’t care to wait a fortnight.”
“It will give us time to plan something lovely—a ceremony in the local church, perhaps?” Lord Portsmouth’s local church was St. George’s. Shopkeeper’s daughters did not marry at St. George’s. Despite the very fine lineages of their grooms.
If Lord Portsmouth’s posture got any straighter, his spine would snap in two. A woman could dream.
“What game is this?” he snapped.
“No game, no game,” Kitty’s father rushed in to assure him. “Just a girl with nerves, nothing to worry about.”
“We had an agreement.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t care to be kept waiting.”
“If you cannot wait, Portsmouth,” Kitty’s father said hopefully, “I do have another daughter.”
Lord Portsmouth barely glanced at Kitty. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s far too old.”
She was ten years older than her sister, true. Which still made her fifteen years younger than he was. She did not point it out. Nor did she point out the fact that she would rather swim naked in the Thames in August than marry him. She bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood.
“Two weeks,” Lord Portsmouth said, “or I take everything and have them toss you in debtor’s prison. Your daughters too. And your widow of a sister.”
Her father would not survive debtor’s prison.
The earl stormed out, fuming.
Aunt Priscilla turned on Kitty. “Now do you see what you’ve done?”