Chapter Sixteen
T he first step to taking down a powerful and corrupt earl was surprisingly akin to a regular day for Kitty.
It had to do with books.
If the note she had found was written by Lady Caroline and sold off as part of her belongings, Kitty was going to have to trace those belongings to various estate sales and buyers. She had already gone through the rest of the items in the box purchased for the shop and found nothing unusual. No more notes, no letters.
Lord Portsmouth had his wife’s life packed into boxes and handed the lot over to an auction house. Tracking the various sales had taken some doing, mostly bribes Kitty could not afford, and then a single suggestion of a visit from Devil and a list had miraculously appeared.
Effective, if vexing. Clearly, there were benefits to people thinking she was the future bride of the Devil.
She herself tried not to think about it too hard. It made her feel odd. Hopeful, hopeless. Unmoored. Too aware of her body and worse, of all of the things she could not let herself want. That part was nothing new but it was sharper, more raw. Devil would never marry her.
Not that it mattered. Because it most certainly did not. Today was for following another lead. Another private library.
And dealing with her father, apparently.
She could count on one hand the number of times he had visited her at the shop. He disdained its very existence, the proof that her mother’s family was in trade when he had only been given a barony as a life peerage because had helped the War Office with some kind of secret invention. Something about a new rifle? Cannonballs? She had never been able to figure it out. But it had made him scads of money. For a very little while. Doing something very much like trade, she felt the need to point out.
Also, it was the only thing keeping him in bread and mutton stew and other necessities.
Her grandmother, his mother-in-law, refused to sell him the store, refused to even talk to him. The day he had lost the majority of his fortune on a single roll of dice, she had sent him raw chicken hearts. Which had sat in the sun for some time before postage.
And now here he was, nose faintly wrinkled as he came through the door in a gray coat with enameled buttons he ought to have sold already. She made a mental note to sneak into his room and remove them. They would buy Galahad enough food for the rest of the year.
“Why does it smell like soup?” he asked, confused.
“Someone hid rotten onions in the back alley two weeks ago.” She shrugged. “We haven’t found the last few yet.” Miss Peridot had been outraged at the waste of it.
“Why would someone do that?”
“I couldn’t say,” she replied, even she could say, and at great length.
“And did you know there is a giant on your doorstep?” her father added. “He’s somewhat off-putting.”
“Yes. He works for Lord Birmingham.”
“Good, good. That’s good.” Her father smiled, and it made her stomach hurt. She knew that smile. It was wheedling, hopeful. “He takes care of you already. He’ll make a fine husband. And a fine son-in-law.”
She rubbed at her breastbone, which had also started to ache. She did not want to hear the rest of what he had to say.
“I need funds, Kitty. Just to get me through the rest of the month. There are several games that I just know would solve my problems.”
She sighed.
He continued, undeterred. “That hell in Covent Garden is going to send that bruiser of theirs after me. You could have Birmingham talk to them.”
By talk to them, he meant have her pretend fiancé pay off his astronomical debts. Devil, who had crafted his reputation on the fact that everyone paid their debts. It was beyond absurd to even contemplate that he would intervene to forgive a wager he was not involved in when he would not forgive those he was involved in.
“Father, no.” She knew he wouldn’t stop. He would hound Devil in the very streets, begging. It made her itchy just to think about it. She rubbed her breastbone again. He wouldn’t listen to her. He never had before. “If you bother him, he’ll ban you from the Sins,” she pointed out.
That, at least, had an effect. His daughter’s pride meant nothing, but being turned away from the most infamous gaming hell when it finally opened? That would drive him mad.
He frowned. “That seems unjust.” He glanced around, more frantically than she liked, then wiped his face, shoulders slumping alarmingly. “I did not have breakfast. You left early again this morning. Do you have any rolls? A muffin?”
He did look pale. Perspiration beaded his upper lip. “Are you ill?” she asked, concerned despite knowing that there was always something behind the simplest of his questions.
“I feel a bit weak, is all. A bit of breakfast will fix me right up.”
She nodded. “I have currant rolls in the back. I’ll get you one.”
“Thank you, Kitty. You’ve always been a good daughter.”
A good daughter who should have known better.
When she returned with the last roll, her father was gone.
So was her lockbox with her money.
Kitty wanted to throw things.
She wanted to rail and rant.
She wanted to cry.
She did none of those things. For one, it would have alerted Wulf, who would have wanted to know what was wrong. And he would tell Devil.
And there was nothing anyone could do that would make a lick of difference to the fact that her father had stolen from her.
Again.
He was obviously panicking—that was the only time he rifled through her trunks at home or came to the shop with teary, hopeful eyes. It was her fault for being distracted. She knew better than to leave him alone with the shop’s money. She knew better.
It made her feel a hundred years old and with iron for bones. Like the entire bookshop was suddenly perched on her shoulders, pressing down, down, down.
At the least old man with the placard hadn’t even tried to spit on her when she arrived. Last month he had thrown soup at Kitty. He was very old, and so she could not even throw the clay bowl back at his head. Once Devil broke their betrothal, she would have to find a better way to keep the rabble from her door. Sharp sticks. A spear. A trebuchet, maybe. A friendly pig who would eat the slop with glee.
Meanwhile, she would salvage the day. She could sit here worrying about Evie, staring out the window for Portsmouth’s men, mad at her father—worse, disappointed—or any of the thousand tasks that needed doing, or she could forge on with her investigation. Her plans and plots and conspiracies. Her one tiny, hard-won lead.
Lord Tadworth was a collector and a recluse who had turned down every letter, every invitation, every request and offer Kitty had ever sent over the years. She tried to form some sort of connection to most avid book lovers as a matter of course, but he did not like to leave his mansion and he liked visitors even less.
Devil, of course, was not in the habit of taking no as an answer. Mostly because so few people offered it.
Not only did he receive an invitation for tea, but it included a tour of Lord Tadworth’s extensive and famous library.
It was irritating.
Devil was likely to agree as she marched to his club to inform him of his new plans for the afternoon.
The Seven Deadly Sins pleasure hall was exactly as extravagant as it should be.
The building itself took up almost as much space as the palace the prince was building for himself. It gleamed white, with fluted columns on either side of the red door and above the portico. There were roses, marble urns, ivy growing up the walls.
Kitty stepped through the iron archway, past the steps leading down to the coal bins and the delivery entrance. The front door was painted red, because a house associated with the devil must surely have a red door. Everything else was expected: soaring columns and carved pediments and freshly washed glass gleaming. No brimstone or writhing souls to be found.
Not even a sign declaring members had found the right place. Only a door knocker in the shape of a flame. And the sounds of construction within, the smell of sawdust and paint.
She had never been here, of course. Ladies did not visit men unchaperoned. Or at all. And certainly not at an already-infamous pleasure hall. And while she was not technically a lady of the Ton , their rules still dogged her steps. Still, she was not an aristocrat, and she had never had a chaperone, even as a young woman. And now she was twenty-nine years old and firmly on the shelf.
But also betrothed.
Her already complicated life had certainly gotten even more complicated of late. A sinfully handsome earl tended to do that.
The door swung open before she could dwell on it further or give in to the nerves that were inconveniently swirling in her belly. She was Kitty Caldecott, Purveyor of Filth and Moral Threat to the Decency of Good Society Everywhere. She could greet a butler of a place named after the Deadly Sins and bully the Devil.
“Hello,” she said cheerfully to said butler. He was made entirely of muscle. And teeth.
“I’m afraid the earl is not accepting callers, Miss…?” She could not place his accent. It was soft and lovely.
“Miss Caldecott,” she supplied. “And of course he is.” The place was too busy and opening night loomed too near for him to be anywhere else, doing anything else.
The butler blinked at her before smiling. He still looked capable of breaking a man’s spine with his bare hands, but now he was at least cheerful about it. “Miss Caldecott, of course. What a pleasure—do come in.” He frowned over her shoulder. “You did not come alone, surely?”
“Wulf followed me very discreetly the entire way here,” she said drily. Godric remained at the shop, fending off vicars and cross ladies and soft fruit hurled from carriages. She must remember to bring him a piece of cake. She knew exactly how tiresome that particular work was.
The foyer was easily the size of a house built for a family of ten. It was a spectacle of epic proportions. Kitty had never seen anything like it. Every inch of every wall had been painted with murals in rich jewel-tone colors. Angels soared overheard; dark forests stood sentinel on either side of the hall. Lucifer fell, his wings glowing and scattering embers. Nymphs peeked from behind stones dotting a pastoral hillside.
And mirrors hung from floor to ceiling, amplifying the light of chandeliers and the oil lamps. It was dazzling.
Beyond, doorways over which hung gilded signs painted “Envy” and “Gluttony” opened to even larger spaces. Envy was a ballroom appropriately painted in green, with a dais for an orchestra and a balcony for an opera singer. Gluttony was on its way to becoming a banquet hall, with red tapestries and carpenters putting the final touches on a long table with lion heads. As Kitty stared wide eyed, a young lad who could only be a boot boy, judging by his age, stared at her. “Ladies aren’t supposed to call on the Devil. They wait for him to call.”
“Pierre,” the butler snapped. “Hush.”
Kitty smiled. “The fine ladies of Mayfair may have the time to sit about waiting for the Devil, but I do not.”
“Oh, I like her.”
A young man approached from the main ballroom, his hair pomaded just so, the gold buttons on his waistcoat gleaming. He was the very picture of a fashionable man about town, if not for the purpling bruise around his eye. “You!” Kitty cried, recognizing him instantly.
She was not concerned about being overly familiar. Once you had been at war with the enemy on the steps of the Golden Griffin, you were family. Those bonds were forged in blood and rotten eggs. And, in this case, gold paint.
“And you !” he returned, a wide smile splitting his handsome face.
“You know each other?” The boot boy was agog. He was clearly the first to get the gossip to bring down to the servant hall. It would give him currency for the rest of the day. Possibly the week.
“We’re old friends, Miss Caldecott and I.”
“We are.” Kitty grinned. “Although I don’t actually know your name.”
“Good point.” He bowed. “Thomas Rochester. You can call me Tom.”
She stared at him. “You’re related to Lord Birmingham?”
“He’s my brother. Try not to hold it against me.” He glanced at the boot boy, who was twitching with excitement. “Go on, little man, what are you even doing up here?”
“The earl’s valet wants me to add champagne to the bootblack for the members.” His eyes were wide as plates. “Frightfully posh, don’t you think?”
“Very elegant,” Kitty agreed solemnly. “Not to mention a little bit ridiculous,” she added in an exaggerated whisper.
“You think so too?”
“I do,” Kitty confessed, just before the butler shooed him away.
“I apologize for everyone here,” the butler muttered.
“Shelby despairs of us.” Tom’s eyes twinkled. “He’s usually at the house, but I confess we are not any better behaved over there. I hear you’re going to be my sister.”
“Oh. Um.”
He winked. “Don’t fret. I don’t expect you to reform him.”
“That’s a relief.” Kitty did not know what else to say. She smiled weakly. Did he know it was a sham betrothal? What exactly had Devil told him? “He must have a study here?”
“Just down that way.”
She peered down the hall. “I don’t want to give him fair warning. He might climb out the window.”
“That, I highly doubt. Third door on the right. Past the atrocious statue of Pan I gave him last Christmas. It was meant to go in his bedroom.”
Tom was quite correct, as it turned out. The statue was vaguely terrifying, but mostly because it stood out so starkly. Pan was all goat legs and horns and a happy, mischievous grin. The sheep at his feet…was not.
Statues of lambs should not be life-sized in the hallway. Nor should their eyes follow you around.
“His name is Oatcake,” Tom called out helpfully.
“No, thank you,” she called back. If she said his name, he might wake up. It seemed entirely possible.
She knocked on Devil’s door, because though she was uncouth enough to barrel ahead before the butler could introduce her, she was not entirely without manners. Aunt Priscilla’s opinion not withstanding. It was only that they were going to be late. And it was the first lead she had found in days. And she’d felt dreadful all day, and suddenly she did not feel dreadful.
“Come,” Devil ordered.
She tucked her tongue firmly into her cheek and decided not to answer with the first, most shocking thing that leapt to her mind at such a command. She entered the study, expecting bookshelves and leather chairs and brandy decanters.
She was not expecting a stunningly beautiful woman in her early forties with lustrous silver-shot black hair and the sultry elegance of Aphrodite come to life.
Kitty did not expect it because Kitty was an idiot.