Page 112 of A Deal with the Devil

She refused to consider why the image made her squirm a little. A lot.

Interesting.

Not now, Kitty.

The door led to the servant hall, lit dimly with a single candle in a wall sconce. There were murmurs from the main room where the staff took their meals. The housekeeper’s door was shut. If Kitty was very careful, she could sneak up the narrow stairs without anyone noticing her.

Easier to do when one did not trip over the kitchen cat, suddenly interested in the newcomer and whether or not she had treats on her person. Kitty caught herself before she smacked her head into the wall.

She was quite certain Priya would not have stumbled. Nor Yelena.

The cat meowed, insulted.

“Kitty, is that you?

Kitty froze.

The cat padded toward the voice, tail high. “There’s a clever cat. Who’s a good kitty?”

Kitty hissed out a breath and crept up the stairs as fast as she could. Her heart pounded in her throat as she slipped into a dark drawing room. Devil waited at the window, a stern silhouette. She unlocked it and pulled the sash open. “Any trouble?”

She smiled. “Of course not.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

“I am an excellent liar.”

“You have a tell, Catherine Caldecott.”

“I do? What is it?”

He snorted, with clearly no intention of enlightening her. He climbed inside as gracefully as if he did so every day of his life. No cat dared wind around his ankles to trip him up. The floorboards did not even dare to creak. “Hmph,” Kitty muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Hurry.”

He stalked behind her like a shadow, silent, unhurried. Graceful. Meanwhile, she felt like she had three left feet and her pulse was a hammer on an anvil, announcing her presence. They ducked through Lady Caroline’s chamber, stopping for another quick look around, but found nothing of note.

Kitty wasn’t sure what she expected from the earls’ chamber: bloody chains suspended from the ceiling, bones piled in the corner? Books burning in the grate instead of coal? Something appropriately awful for someone who murdered his wives.

Instead, it was one more Mayfair chamber that hid its rot behind glittering crystal chandeliers and oil paintings of horses and silk drapery. There was a leather chair by the window, a washstand of carved mahogany, a silver-embroidered coverlet on the bed. No hint that he had had a wife, never mind three. No portraits here, either, or love letters or stray hairpins. Nothing to suggest a woman had ever set foot over the threshold of this bedroom, or the entire house, really. Kitty wasn’t sure why, but it felt wrong. Ominous.

She would not let him erase her sister. Nor Lady Caroline. Miss Campbell.

“He has to be hiding something.” She was not as calm in her search as Devil. He was methodical, the slight frown beetling his brow the only hint that he was searching for something more than a lost button. He opened the drawers of a decorative table: three enameled snuffboxes, cheroots, matchsticks.

They looked under the mattress, under the bed. Under the cushions. The commode was not spared. Portsmouth’s collections of cravat pins and shoe buckles. An astonishing number of hats. Every pocket of every coat.

They only found an original volume of Chaucer’s Decameron. “He does not deserve this book,” Kitty said. She dropped it into the pocket tied around her stays.

Devil’s mouth quirked. “You do that a lot.”

“What?”

“Steal.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You break ankles.”