Chapter Thirteen
D evil stilled, suddenly a warrior alert on the battlefield. Searching for any hint of attack. For the enemy.
While she was still straddling him.
She did not want to regret this delicious moment outside of time and place. There were too many regrets already. She shifted to slide free, but his hands tightened on her hips, keeping her still. “Explain,” he said softly, darkly.
“It’s nothing to do with you.”
“What were you doing in the countess’s bedroom?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not safe.”
Her head whipped up. “Don’t you dare suggest that I do not know the seriousness of…whatever this is. My sister’s life hangs in the balance.” Because she craved the feel of him between her thighs, she pushed back, away. “Let me go.”
“I don’t want to,” he grumbled, even as he released her.
She scooted back on to her seat, yanking her skirts down where they belonged. Her body was deeply, deeply confused. And rather irate that she had moved away instead of closer. He lounged like a king on his throne, not at all discomfited by the fact she had just come on his fingers. It made her want to kick him.
“I know that look.” He trapped her leg between his knees. “Last time you followed it with a facer. I don’t fancy being kicked either. Tell me about the message instead. Who wrote it? Where did you get it?”
She crossed her arms even though she knew it made her look petulant. She was starting to feel petulant, truth be told.
“Did you find it the countess’s bedchamber? Is that why you were there?”
“Yes.”
He cursed, low and vicious.
“Don’t you think it odd that Lady Portsmouth’s bedroom was so…empty? Nothing left of her at all. Not even a single portrait of her in the house.” She paused. “Of any of his previous wives, actually.”
“The earl is not exactly what you would call sentimental.”
“Not to mention the fact that he’s a murderer.”
“That too. He has always wiped away any trace of his wives. Claims it’s so as not to make his new bride uncomfortable.”
“Untimely death is uncomfortable,” Kitty muttered.
“Where did you find it, exactly?”
“Hidden behind her bed.” She rubbed at her breastbone. Portsmouth meant to make her sister just another woman he erased from the world.
Devil watched her steadily, every inch the man who held a hundred fortunes in the palm of his hand on a regular basis. “What else?”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“There’s something else you’re not telling me.”
She tried not to wriggle in her seat. Willed herself not to flush nervously.
“Kitty,” he said, “this is serious.”
“There’s a chance Lady Caroline is not dead, only missing. Or on the run. If I find her, I can… I don’t know,” she acknowledged. Do something .”
“I thought the whole point of your blackmailing me was so I would do something.”
“And have you?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
“And are you going to help me find Lady Caroline?” she asked.
“Are you going to let me do it alone?”
“Absolutely not. I’m perfectly happy to take Portsmouth down. But I won’t put you in danger to do it.”
She shrugged one shoulder, let it fall. “That doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
The woman was a menace.
This was not a new revelation—he already knew she was a menace—but she insisted on proving it at every opportunity. Climbing up buildings, sneaking into Portsmouth’s house. Already finding out more about his last wife than the magistrates or constables had managed.
Coming on Devil’s fingers, gasping and clenching around him. It had taken every ounce of resolve to stop when he found the note. And that was only because fear for her was like a dousing of icy water down the back of his neck.
Who knew what Lord Portsmouth would have done to her?
Nothing good, not with his infatuation with her sister. Not with his character. Devil had seen rats among the corpses on the battlefield at Waterloo whom he would trust more than fucking Portsmouth .
It was not a secret that his wives had all perished under convenient circumstances. Kitty was right to be scared for her sister. She ought to be terrified.
If only fear proved a deterrent for Miss Kitty Caldecott. He already knew it would not.
And now he had claimed her for his own.
It had felt too right, thrumming through him like fate, which he did not believe in. But she was his now. That , he believed in.
And he would protect her. He had done things on the Continent that Portsmouth could not dream of. He might be a threat, a murderer.
Devil was worse. London knew it.
But perhaps it was time for a reminder. He did not have time for missing shipments or broken doors.
And he definitely did not have the patience for threats against Kitty.
It hardly mattered why, or that he had known her for less than a month all told. He knew it in his gut, and he had learned long ago to listen to primal instinct. He had met her once before but she did not remember it. He did. He recalled it quite clearly: she had marched up to Brutus, who was collecting vowels and payments for wagers and listening to her father’s pitiful excuses. Devil had not bothered to listen; he had heard them all before. The baron was pleading and sweating. Nothing new.
Until Kitty had marched into the club, which very specifically did not allow women, glared at her father, and then handed a pouch of coins to Brutus. “It’s all there,” she said, lifting her voice so Devil could hear her, as if he had not leaned forward to get a better look at the woman with the red curls and the gray eyes that threatened to burn the building down around them. He remembered there were ink stains on her fingers. A mended tear in the hem of her dress.
“That’s the last of it,” she snapped at the baron. “Tell Aunt P to leave Evie out of it.”
And then she marched away without a single backward glance at the men staring at her, at her father, even at Devil. He did not think she had even noticed him.
Magnificent.
And then she had picked his bloody pocket. Let him kiss her in her bookshop, let him touch her in his carriage until he was so hard he had genuine concern over injuring himself.
And now he was back at that same club, not the Sins, just one of the many that catered to gentlemen’s entertainment. It had become his favorite haunt since that day, all because of her. Worrying.
But fine as long as no one else noticed.
Such as MacLeod, that gossip. Or Granny Brutus, who kept sending him bits of the most awful poetry in case “his girl liked poetry.”
His girl , as she put it, preferred scandalous novels that would make the most hardened rake choke on his own ill repute.
Devil tried to put her from his mind, or at the very least not appear as though he were contemplating things like poetry and the hot, silky feel of her around his fingers. In this place, he needed to be Devil: aloof, terrifying, ruthless.
Simple enough.
Especially if he let his mind wander to the fact that someone had broken into her shop. That people regularly tossed rotten vegetables in her direction. Made unseemly remarks. Insulted her.
Never again.
“Devil?” The man’s voice shook as his throat bobbed. “Never mind, you’re busy.”
Devil looked up at the sweating viscount and set his glass of port down. “Speak.”
“About that wager…”
Devil did not blink, did not say a word.
“I just need a little more time.” The viscount gulped as MacLeod made his way through the members playing cards, smoking cheroots. He shouted for more wine as he sat next to Devil. The candlelight shone off the scar that sliced halfway across his throat. He gulped again. “I’ll have it for you tomorrow. One thousand pounds. Tomorrow.”
“Good choice,” MacLeod said mildly.
“What are you doing here?” Devil asked him as a footman brought another glass of port. MacLeod shook his head and asked for coffee instead.
“What are you doing here without anyone to watch your back?”
“No one has tried to kill me in weeks.” It was an occupational hazard when collecting debt vowels was your occupation. Devil wouldn’t miss it. But he did not regret a single bit of it either. It had served its purpose.
“That you know of.” Macleod snorted. “Because I’m that good.”
“How do you get through doorways with that fat head of yours?”
“I manage.”
The hum of the crowd intensified around them as the night progressed, members falling more heavily into their cups. It made them at once bolder and more desperate when they inevitably approached Devil to beg for an invitation to the opening of the Sins, or for mercy.
Devil was not handing out either that night. He was only offering the threat of his presence.
When Portsmouth arrived, Devil’s eyes narrowed.
Macleod whistled softly. “I haven’t seen that look on your face since the war ended.”
Portsmouth greeted the other members, motioning imperiously to a footman for a drink. He snarled with scorn when it was not delivered quickly enough.
“Portsmouth, I thought you were supposed to be celebrating your impending nuptials,” someone shouted from a nearby table. “What happened, old man? Not up to it?”
His companions laughed. Portsmouth stiffened. “I’m not a butcher’s son after the nearest barmaid. I can afford to wait for the right lady,” he said.
“I’ve got a wager in the books that says you can’t.”
The tension in the air was palpable, sharp, but still not sharp enough to cut through the haze of drunkenness at three o’clock in the morning. Half the men made commiserating, sympathetic murmurs; the others mocked louder. The club betting book was passed around.
“The chit is the daughter of a minor baron. Couldn’t find another duke’s daughter, eh?”
“The chit is beautiful, at least.”
“Her sister is a disgrace. Runs that bookshop. That the family you’re keen on marrying into, old man?”
“My wife loves that shop—shut your gob.”
On and on it went, with Portsmouth ordering another drink and then another, silently seething.
“Is he going to be a problem?” Macleod asked.
“Not for long,” Devil replied.