Page 20 of A Deal with the Devil

She glanced at the corner again and let out a mournful sigh, followed by a much more irritated one for good measure. Kitty bit the inside of her cheek against a laugh. She knew what was coming: a hurricane of soft hints and gentle threats. No one stood against Lady Winthorpe. Mostly because she so often wandered away when one tried to fight back.

“Dears, I should like to sit down.” She settled herself like a partridge, if partridges wore bonnets trimmed with roses and what looked like a cabbage made of emeralds. Perhaps Kitty ought to introduce her to Sir Reginald. “Oh no,” she continued breathily. “You don’t want that one—that man has clearly never touched a woman. Try this one. And this one. And don’t forget my favorite!”

Honestly, she was better at this than Kitty was. The ladies were gently banished with their pile of books so that Lady Winthorpe could browse without interruption. They paid for their purchases and left, the one with the beauty mark lingering. She swallowed awkwardly, toying with her glove. She had the haunted and hunted shock that Evie had had when Priya confirmed that Kitty was not overreacting over Portsmouth’s cruelty. “I heard…” She trailed off.

Kitty waited. She knew from experience that if she said the wrong thing, or even the right thing too fast or too forcefully, the girl would bolt.

“I… Someone said you knew how to…run. Where to go.”

Kitty wanted to ask a hundred questions. “Yes. Are you in trouble?”

She nodded mutely.

“Do you need a safe place or a safe doctor or something else entirely?”

“I don’t know. You must think me silly.”

Kitty shook her head. “Definitely not. You can go to the Spinster Society,” she added. “On Bolton Row. Believe me, they will help.” She did not mention any of the Spinsters by name.

“The Spinster Society? In Mayfair? Oh, I couldn’t. I’m not a fine lady.”

“They would still help you. But I understand.” Priya was equipped to handle the peerage and their particular types of power. Shop girls and innkeeper’s daughters did not always have the same problems. Though power was always at the rotten root. “There’s another house in Covent Garden—”

The door burst open, slamming into the wall.

The girl jumped like a scalded cat.

“Depravity!” Vicar Andover shouted. He huffed angrily, like a bull—or like an old, portly man who had walked too fast.

His wife slipped in beside him, just as starched and vinegary as if she had come from a pantomime. Mrs. Andover’s tightly pinned hair did not detract from her beauty, all chiseled bone structure. But her eyes were shrewd, hungry. She was a devoted—and very loud—member of the Ladies’ Society for Moral Standards. She attended weekly meetings to learn how to best harass those she thought were contributing to the downfall of society. Kitty knew because the woman had started shouting it at her on a regular basis over the past couple of weeks.

It made Kitty tired just to look at her.

Also vexed. So very vexed.

Sweat beaded the vicar’s upper lip. He pointed to the girl, who looked as though she was ready to vanish into the floorboards. “Run! Run from this sinful place!”

The girl fled.

Kitty could have cheerfully murdered him. There was no telling when or if the girl would find the courage or simply the opportunity to come back for the information she clearly needed.

The vicar and his wife stared at Kitty, who raised an eyebrow. “Have you come for the latest issue of Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies?” The list was a guide to the prostitutes of Covent Garden and their…specialties. Kitty did not actually have any copies on hand—they were mostly purchased by the men of the Ton, who did not often frequent her shop.

But the offer made the vicar and his wife choke. He sputtered, looking as though he might faint. His wife was made of sterner stuff. “This is no good work for a spinster,” she said in strident tones.

Kitty’s shopkeeper smile did not falter, mostly because she knew it infuriated them. “As the only spinster here, I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much.”

The vicar sucked in an offended breath. And then he gagged.

He had just remembered he was holding a bag of eggs. Anyone could see they were not fresh.

Kitty tensed. If the contents of that bag even grazed any of her books, especially the rarer ones, she absolutely would murder him. The damage would be impossible to fix.

The moment grew brittle. Mrs. Andover’s eyes went positively gleeful with violently righteous indignation.

And then Lady Winthorpe toddled out from her corner with a handful of books. She blinked at the vicar. He blinked back at her. “Sir, there is something wrong with your eggs,” she said.

“Erm.” It was the best response he could muster when faced with a dowager countess. Even Mrs. Andover froze for a moment before stiffening her spine. She elbowed her husband in the midsection. Hard. Kitty saw the exact moment when they thought they had a new weapon in his arsenal.