Chapter Fifteen
T here was a dagger in his hand even as he pushed her against the brick wall, covering her entirely with his body. She squeaked in surprise. There was a second dagger—he knew because he felt it slice into his upper arm before clattering against the wall. A searing bite of pain, inconsequential until he was satisfied Kitty was safe.
He turned, his back still shielding her. Only a couple of pedestrians had noticed, one of them pale as boiled parsnips. The others walked on, unconcerned. London—love it or hate it, it would not change, not for anyone.
Macleod glared between the passersby, between the carriage, the froth of London obscuring his view. “I sent Michael after him.”
Kitty tried to peer around Devil, but he would not let her. He was not convinced it was safe yet.
She poked him in the kidney. He ignored that too, glancing at MacLeod. The other man nodded. “Safe enough now, I reckon.”
“Excuse me.” Kitty pinched him. Hard. “You’re crushing me, Lord Birmingham.” He eased away reluctantly. She popped away from the wall. “What on earth just—You are bleeding!” Outrage darkened her eyes from gray to nearly black. Outrage for him.
He looked down at his sleeve. “I liked this coat.”
“Rhys!” She looked around frantically, finally plucking a handkerchief from a passing gentleman who protested until he saw the look on Devil’s face. And the blood spattered on the pavement at his feet. He hurried away as Kitty folded the thick material and pressed it to Devil’s wound. “You need a doctor.”
He smiled at her.
She glowered. “Do not smile at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a silly woman. You’ve been stabbed .”
“Barely.”
“Choke on your pride, Lord Birmingham. You’re having it looked at.”
Devil grinned. He couldn’t help it. Despite the simmering fury he planned to take out on the attacker when Michael dragged him back.
MacLeod blinked at Devil, who could not remember the last time his friend had looked so shocked. “You’re smiling.”
“Shut it.”
Macleod nodded solemnly to Kitty. “You’re right. He does need a doctor.”
Devil, being as stubborn as a boatful of cats, would not let Kitty summon a doctor. He even insisted on stopping at a bakery to procure bread and marmalade for her breakfast.
He really was a madman.
She tried not to like it so much. Especially as he was still bleeding. For her? Possibly. Had the knife been aimed at him or at herself? Either way, he had shielded her.
He let her bully him into her shop, which sported gleamingly clean windows, thanks to Wulf’s standing guard overnight. Devil nodded his approval. “Continuous guard.”
Wulf noticed the tear in his sleeve, the bloody handkerchief, and nodded back. “Aye.”
Kitty brought Devil to her chair in the back room and was gratified to find there was still clean water in the kettle over the cold ashes of the grate. She made quick work of gathering a cleaning bowl, more rags, soap. She had thread somewhere, but she had never stitched up a person. She did not think he would appreciate a griffin embroidered in gold thread on his arm.
He shrugged out of his coat. She could hear the sounds of his cravat being pulled loose. She turned just in time to see him pull his lawn shirt over his head, baring his torso. He was solidly muscular, more sun-kissed than she would have imagined for an earl, and dusted with hair. She tried not to stare. To salivate.
And then he shifted so that his wound was visible, and all of her prurient interest slid away. It was not a deep wound, but it was ragged. It looked painful. She sucked in a breath. “Sit down.”
He lowered himself into a ladder-backed wooden chair with a careless groan, as if he had gone for a long, exerting walk instead of being attacked in broad daylight on Ludgate Hill.
“Oh, Rhys,” she murmured, dabbing at the blood with a clean, wet cloth. It had once belonged to an old nightshift she had pulled apart for rags.
“This is not the first time someone has tried to stab me,” Devil said, unconcerned. “It’s not even the fifth time.”
She sniffed. “That does speak well to your character. If people keep trying to poke you with sharp weapons, you might consider improving your personal manner.”
He shrugged. Blood pooled and dripped on the floor.
“Stop that—I just had it stanched.” She pressed harder. “You really should see a proper doctor. I mostly have salve for bruises.”
He nudged the cloth aside for a moment. “It won’t need stitching. It didn’t cut me deep.”
She lathered up her soap, plain and not at all scented with roses or sandalwood or whatever he was used to. He winced when it came into contact with his wound. “Does it sting?” she asked.
“A bit.”
“You probably should try harder not to get stabbed, then.”
“Probably.”
The water rinsed away, pink and soapy. She swallowed.
“Why aren’t we sitting over there?” Devil asked, gesturing to the reading room with the embroidered cushions and the oil lamps. It was marginally more spacious, but she imagined he’d pointed it out only to distract her. As she had no wish to become any queasier, she let him.
She did not see a long career as a nursemaid in her future.
“That is the ladies’ reading room,” Kitty explained.
“And the men?”
“The men have access to every other reading room in London. Every other physical corner of every other building from here to Inverness. They don’t need my sliver of a reading room.”
Devil nodded. “I suppose that’s true enough.”
The fact that he considered the matter without being defensive, and then actually agreed, made her fall a little bit in love with him.
Just a little. Not enough to worry about. Like a small cold, easily remedied with rest and lemon tea.
“When I’m allowed in Parliament, then they may attend my reading room,” she said, scrubbing his wound harder. The blood barely bothered her now—hers was boiling too hot.
“A radical,” he said.
“Merely rational,” she corrected him.
He did not look offended or insulted or condescending. Only interested.
It made her too aware of his nearness, the ridges of his chest, the hair tapering under the waistband of his breeches. Too drawn to the curious, understanding man under the shiveringly cold indifference of Devil.
She wrapped a clean, dry cloth around his wound, tying it tightly. “You’ll need to make a honey dressing.” She did not tell him she did not have honey. It was an exorbitant luxury at the moment.
Her fingertips brushed his arm. The muscles and tendons rippled under her touch. If he turned his head even a little, his mouth would brush against hers.
She stepped back. Mostly because devouring an injured man in her back room was probably not the right thing to do.
But he was not having it. He snaked his arm around her waist and tugged her forward—not just between his knees, but turning her so he could perch her on his lap. “What are you doing? Your arm!”
“My arm is fine,” he murmured against her throat. “Thanks to you. You took care of me.” His teeth scraped lightly over her skin, and she shivered. “Let me take care of you .”
“This isn’t a wager. There are no reciprocal terms.”
He bit gently on the spot where her neck met her shoulder. Heat tingled through her core. He was entirely too good at that. “We already agreed one has nothing to do with the other,” he said, firmly, with more than a hint of command. “This pull between us exists on its own.”
It was a lovely fantasy. She was willing to let it be true for a little while longer. Reality would always find them. She didn’t have to draw a map. She squirmed, feeling him harden against her hip.
“Sit still, firecracker.” His voice was rough now, threaded through with want and need. She was already gasping a little by the time she turned her head so she could claim his mouth, or him hers. It didn’t matter. It was enough that their tongues tangled, their breaths mingled. He made her feel as if she were floating, but also anchored so thoroughly and deeply to him that she could do anything. Ask for anything. Feel everything.
He drew her skirt up, fingers moving up her inner thigh until he cupped her quim in one big hand. “You’re wet for me,” he groaned as if she had offered him everything he had ever wanted. He lounged like a king, pinning her in place. Taking in order to give. Commanding her body better than she ever had.
It made her wild.
She rubbed against him, mindlessly seeking friction. He was stealing her breath with his breath, with his touch, stroking her bud, before the invasion of two fingers rubbing against her inner walls, stretching her just so. She gasped and he retreated, returned, sliding through her wet heat. She clutched his arm, frantic to get closer.
He winced. Barely, but it was enough to stop her. She froze. “Your arm.”
“To the devil with my arm.”
“Was that a pun?”
“No, a desperate attempt to keep you focused.”
“I am focused,” she said, reluctantly slipping off his lap. Her heart was still tumbling, pulse flinging through her from her throat to her quim. Her body tingled with the abrupt distance from him, her arousal disoriented, still seeking, searching. “You’re injured.”
“I’m fine.” He met her gaze, eyes glittering, mouth quirking. “Come here, firecracker.”
She took a step back, and even though she felt quite desperate, she was smiling. There was something new between them, something that was not all teeth. “You really are the Devil.”
“Let me prove it to you.”
“Even the Devil needs a rest,” she returned crisply, easing behind the table. It felt prudent to put something between them. The fanged desire still sparking though her was deeply unimpressed with her choice.
She didn’t much like it either.
“Kitty,” he murmured in a way that nearly had her moaning aloud. She swayed toward him.
“You’ll bleed on my floor,” she said, gripping the edge of the table hard enough to bite into her flesh. To clear her head. To stop her from reaching for him.
“I’ll clean it up.”
“I can’t exactly picture you holding a mop.”
“I’ll have Wulf clean it up,” he amended instantly.
She grinned. She couldn’t help it. Under the persona of hard, vengeful earl, there was a likeable man who did not take himself as seriously as the world thought he did. It was deeply appealing. She nearly told him she thought he was amiable just to see the expression on his face.
Instead, she forced herself back into the moment. An earl and a shopkeeper, a pretend betrothal to help her save her sister from a real one. Missing wives. Attacks on the street.
“Do we think it was Lord Portsmouth who sent the man with the knife?” she asked. “And was he sent for you? Or me? But why would he bother wanting to kill me?”
“If he was trying to kill you, he won’t see the dawn.” The glint in Devil’s eyes was glacial. The kind of fury that was so cold it nevertheless burned down entire cities.
Kitty blinked. “Oh my.”
So much for amiable. Unfortunately, this was equally attractive.
Misreading her, Devil reached for his shirt. Travesty. He should never wear a shirt. “If you wanted a different kind of help, you should have stolen from a milksop.”
“I am not very keen on being murdered, actually,” she said crisply. “So I am fairly certain I stole from exactly the right person.”
He blinked back at her. “You’re really not afraid of me, are you?”
She tilted her head. What a contradiction this man was: powerful yet oddly vulnerable, as though he was not used to being seen. Stoic and curious, cold and hot. Oh, she was in trouble. “Do you want me to be?”
“No,” he replied quietly. “Not you.”
“But everyone else?”
“I don’t care about them. They can go to hell. I’m not a kind man, Kitty.”
Ha. She was beginning to see right through him.
“You saved my life,” she said. “And I’ve been called a violent termagant too many times to get swoony over a tiny threat of murder.”
Although she was quite sure it had been a promise and not a threat. Never mind. She was also quite sure she should not find it so comforting. She’d told him he ought to work on his character, but obviously she should do the same.
“Who has called you that?” he demanded.
She snorted. “Who hasn’t?”
He did not look amused. Being stabbed and bleeding all over himself amused him, apparently. Her being insulted did not.
She was in so very much trouble.
When Devil returned to the Sins, Michael had already found his attacker, as suspected. Macleod had tied him to a chair in a small back room mostly used for storing supplies for the housemaids. The man was shaking and Devil hadn’t even opened his mouth yet. He shut the door behind him, disgusted.
The man whimpered. His jaw was bruised, blood on his teeth.
Macleod snorted. “This one’s not exactly brave.”
“Stupid, though,” Devil said. “For putting a lady in danger. My lady.”
The man visibly gulped. Devil recognized him—an earl’s third son with an addiction to horse racing. Cock fighting. Bear baiting. Devil couldn’t abide that kind of gambling. He’d seen too much death. Too much violence to be impressed by violence for violence’s sake. He made a point to wager on the bear.
“Emmett,” he said.
Emmett jerked at this name.
Macleod handed Devil a debt vowel, even though he did not need it. “You owe me three thousand pounds,” he continued coldly. “Killing me won’t wipe out your debt.” And yet someone always insisted on testing the theory. “More importantly, you came at me in the vicinity of Miss Caldecott. I could happily toss you in the Thames with a stone around your neck for that.”
He had never done any such thing. But Emmett didn’t know that, judging by the state of him.
“Christ, man. If you piss yourself in here, you’re only going to make me angrier.” Devil leaned over, barely restrained violence in a superfine wool coat. “Tell me about Portsmouth.”
“Wh-what?”
“The Earl of Portsmouth. Have you been talking to him?”
“N-no,” Emmett stammered. “Why would the earl talk to me?”
As Devil presumed, but he would not leave it to chance. “You attacked me of your own volition?”
When Emmett did not immediately answer, Devil arched a brow.
“Yes!” the man finally replied. “I… Three thousand pounds. I can’t…”
“I didn’t make the wagers,” Devil reminded him. “ You made them. You’re obviously banned from any future Devil’s Nights and from this club. In fact, you are banned from London altogether.”
“From London ?”
“It’s time you disappeared.”
London assumed Devil went around murdering people for fun. It was hardly necessary. He only needed the illusion of it with the certainty of retribution and consequences for crossing him.
“Let’s make it from England entirely.”
“But where would I go?”
“Not my problem.” He could call a magistrate or a constable, but Emmett’s father was an earl and it would not make the kind of statement that needed to be made. Miss Caldecott was off-limits.
Emmett was choking on fear and a bit slow to realize his good fortune. “But…”
And Devil’s patience had run out. “If I see you again, it will be the last thing you see.”
Macleod shook his head. “Mate, the other way to disappear is facedown in the river. Say thank you and run, idiot.”
Emmett visibly gulped. “Thank you.”
“Go on,” Devil said, slicing through his ropes. He was not careful about it. “You have until sundown. Run.”