Chapter Eleven
T he party was as awful as Kitty assumed it would be.
As a harbinger of doom, the carriage ride over was suitably ominous. The hired hackney smelled like fish pies and cheroot smoke. Her father was already thoroughly soused and stumbled climbing up the steps, ripping the knee of his breeches. Aunt Priscilla vibrated with barely concealed nerves and outrage that Kitty still refused to divulge Evie’s whereabouts.
Kitty just wanted to get there so she could get home again and crawl under the coverlet with her newest romantic novel. The monster hero was a Minotaur and oddly kind.
She would have preferred a Minotaur to anything this night had to offer.
She wore her best gown, which she knew perfectly well was nowhere near good enough for a dinner party at an earl’s townhouse. It was a cheerful yellow, paired with her only pair of elbow-length gloves. It was the same one she had worn to the Devil’s Night.
“I wish you’d have let me scrub away some of those freckles,” Aunt Priscilla muttered. The closer they got to Grosvenor Square, the sharper her edges.
“That’s not how freckles work, Aunt P.”
“Well, they make you look dirty. And don’t call me Aunt P among the beau monde .”
“Yes, Aunt P.” Kitty softened the response with a small smile. She was nervous too. Regrettably. She would never let them know it, the way no one would see her exhaustion or anger when washing splatters off her shop windows.
“I don’t have to remind you how important tonight is,” her aunt charged on.
But she would.
“It’s your fault, you know. If you would just tell us where Evie—”
“I don’t know,” Kitty replied.
“And I don’t know how my brother raised such an ungrateful liar.”
Aunt Priscilla elbowed the baron so hard that he woke with a shout of “One more round, I’m good for it, I swear.” He blinked at his family. “Eh?”
It might have been funny if it weren’t so aggravating. At least that was one thing Kitty and her aunt agreed on, if their exchanged glance was anything to go by.
“Oh, get yourself together, Francis,” Aunt Priscilla snapped. “Honestly, you’ve become worse than even our grandfather was. And they wrote a song about him at the village pub.”
“Every gentleman has a tipple or two.”
“You stink of the alehouse. Gentlemen drink wine .”
It went without saying that they could not afford wine.
“Kitty’s little shop is doing well enough—she could buy me some wine.” His eyes were mournful. “Eh, tabby-cat?”
Kitty looked outside, focusing on the lights of Grosvenor Square. They poured from the windows, swung from the dozens and dozens of carriages clogging the street, flickered from artfully placed torches. It was something out of a fairy tale: grand houses of pale stone, warm honey light, glittering glass windows. People poured out of the painted carriages in silk gowns, snowy cravats, diamonds flashing, gold buttons gleaming. It did not even smell like London; here it was beeswax and perfume and gardens thick with lilies and roses.
She had never wanted to be anywhere less.
Oh well. Frying pan into the fire, as they said.
The townhouse was a perfect gilded treasure. Elegant, sophisticated.
With a heart of rot.
By the time Kitty had given her cloak to a footman, her father had already vanished into the back parlor where the card games were underway. Her aunt shot her one steely warning glare and went to greet Lord Portsmouth with effusive deference. It was hard to watch. He turned in Kitty’s direction, and she curtsied, bile rising in her throat. There was something deeply cruel to the way he smiled. Something not right.
Music spilled through the shining rooms, played by an orchestra hidden behind a screen of ivy in the ballroom. The air was hot and sweet. Kitty knew not a single soul.
Not a single soul who would admit to knowing her, that was.
She spotted several customers who recognized her with mild panic, as if she were going to start shouting over the violins that she had just received a new romance centering on a many-tentacled kraken prince that might interest them. She nearly chuckled at the thought and tucked herself quietly among the chairs set out for dowagers and wallflowers. In a few minutes, no one would remember she was here at all.
Perfect.
It was lovely to drink champagne and eat leek tarts and parmesan biscuits. To hear music again, so beautifully played.
It was even lovelier to slip away to the library.
It only took a single glance to know that Lord Portsmouth did not deserve his library.
It was, quite simply, magnificent.
Polished oak shelves, lamps in every corner, and hundreds of books from wall to ceiling, immaculately bound and sorted. She let out a little sigh, as if she had just wandered into a thousand-year-old church full of the bones of saints and holy men.
She did not want to admire a single thing that belonged to the earl. But all organized alphabetically, dusted, with painted titles in gilt catching the lamplight, it was a remarkable sight.
And it would take her hours to inspect. Glorious hours, but hours she did not have to spare.
Her first turn about the room presented a shocking lack of novels and poetry. A crime, in her opinion. And a little unusual in a house that had seen three wives to date. She plucked books off the shelves, flipping as quickly as she could, searching for little notes.
She did not find any. And, regrettably, she was found.
“Oh ho, what have we here, gents?”
Three young men, drunk, bored, and indulged, stumbled into the library. One of them winked at her. He was tall and golden and clearly considered himself as charming as a prince from a fairy story.
Kitty never did like the princes. She preferred the dragon. Every. Single. Time.
And she was fairly certain tonight was not going to change her opinion on the matter.
She knew how to recognize men like Lady Susanna’s husband, who escorted his wife to discuss shocking novels in a small shop outside of Mayfair. Men like Clara’s new sea captain husband.
These were not such men. These were the worst Mayfair had to offer. They oozed entitlement and privilege and arrogance. Not to mention wine. Her aunt was perfectly correct on that score: gentlemen did drink wine. By the barrelful, apparently.
And they were between her and the door. She curtsied and tried for a quick exit regardless. She already knew it was not going to work.
“Where are you going?” the dark-haired one drawled. “You’ll hurt our feelings.”
Kitty had several things to say about their feelings. None of them were complimentary. Nor would they be remotely helpful in this particular predicament.
Not only did she prefer the dragon, but she also vastly preferred scrubbing day-old egg off the shop pavement on the hottest day of the year to this .
“Pardon me, I am expected,” she murmured. Her pulse was a distracting, fretful sound in her ears. She was a mouse trapped in the larder and did not care for it.
“No one’s missing you.” The third gentleman snorted derisively, but she still liked him best, as he was far more concerned with the brandy decanter on one of the tables than her.
“Anyway, this is supposed to be a celebration.” The golden prince sauntered nearer. “And it’s deadly dull.”
Kitty had no intention of being the entertainment. “I really must go.”
“I don’t think so.” He closed in, grinning.
When Devil stalked her into a corner, there was something thrilling about it. A recognition that though he was perfectly dangerous, he meant her no actual harm.
Not so here. She considered throwing a book at the prince’s head. It might buy her just enough time to dart toward one of the doors. It might not. At least it would be satisfying.
“St. John, what are you—” A young woman glided into the library, her sudden smile just as sharp and poisonous.
Kitty swore under her breath. This would not help matters. She knew it instantly.
The lady clicked her tongue like a disapproving governess. “Shocking lack of chaperone,” she said. “What will the dowagers say?”
The dark-haired one snorted into his brandy. “Nothing that would entice any of us to marry a bookseller, I can assure you.”
“Wait, I’ve heard about you. And the books you sell.” The blond prince was not the type to lecture Kitty on wickedness—he was the type to expect her to offer herself along with her books. “Bit of a wild one, aren’t you? I can tell, the hair and all.”
“Yes,” Kitty said drily. “Accounting ledgers and calculating price margins are terribly exciting.”
“Eh?” He shook his head. “Come and have a drink with us.”
She did not like the look in his eye. “No, thank you.”
She edged toward the other door and contemplated hurling herself right out the window if it became necessary.
“Oh, come now, no one sells books like that and still acts the demure wallflower.”
“No.” She wondered if gagging might be clear enough for him to understand. She did not count on it.
Their lady friend would not offer assistance. She watched the proceedings with a nasty smile. They clustered together like poisonous berries on the vine. And Kitty did not have any gold paint to toss at them.
She did have a decanter of brandy. She took a step to the side and knocked it over the table toward them. They jumped back out of instinct born of generations of clean lace or tidy ruffles and shiny shoes.
Kitty took the opportunity to dash out of the other door while the dark-haired one stared mournfully at the broken decanter pouring liquor at his feet. “Deuced waste.”
Kitty ducked into the servant stairwell, where no one would even think to look for her. The servants were too busy running back and forth with sewing supplies and tea for the ladies’ retiring room, more wine and champagne, platters of soft bread, cheeses rolled in peppercorns, ribbons of cucumbers in salt. There were a thousand tasks that went into a grand affair such as this one, too many for them to pay her much mind.
She darted up to the second floor, toward the family chambers.
It was a monumentally stupid plan. But it was also the last time she was likely to be able to roam unsupervised through the Portsmouth townhouse. Surely the missing countess had left something behind in her bedroom. A clue. Another letter. Something.
It wasn’t safe, but then, neither was Evie.
Lamps burned low between tables set with towering displays of flowers that stabbed at the painted ceiling. It smelled of lilies and furniture polish. Oil paintings marched along, scrupulously hung at just the right intervals. As Kitty did not exactly know what she was looking for, she poked her head into each bedroom she came across.
The master suite was obvious, stately and luxurious, and Kitty ducked back out immediately lest Portsmouth’s valet be waiting inside. Her father had had a valet for a few months: a small Frenchman who terrified her father into being fashionable. Aunt Priscilla had adored him.
The lady of the house usually had a bedroom adjoining the main suite. Portsmouth was too traditional to have it any other way, which was obliging. The bedroom was quiet, with the feeling that rooms had when they were not lived in. The coverlet was a pearly gray, as was the silk wallpaper. It was elegant and pretty. Perfectly Mayfair.
Like hell would Evie be trapped here.
Kitty opened the drawers to the writing desk and searched the armoires and the scrollwork chest at the foot of the bed and found…nothing. No helpful diary, no map with a big “X” marking where Lady Caroline had run off to. Nothing under the cushions embroidered with silver swans; nothing under the mattress.
Nothing until she sat back in frustration and her finger caught something. The loop of a black ribbon tied to a torn bit of paper, rolled up tight. She recognized the handwriting from the Desires of the Duchess .
Do not trust Portsmouth. Run.
A warning from his previous wife to his next wife?
She had finally found something.
And then she was found. Again.
Bollocks.