Page 25 of A Deal with the Devil

She was fairly certain it was not.

She flattened her palms over his chest, the muscles firm under her touch. Was he strong all over? Hard and powerful?

Not now, Kitty Caldecott.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

He paused. “Pardon?”

She nearly laughed. He had not been denied in a very long time. But she would only disappoint, and anyway, it would not get her what she needed.

What she wanted, almost certainly. Not what she needed.

What her sister needed.

“I won’t be seduced.” Even if she suddenly really, really wanted to be. Rather desperately, it had to be said. She knew her cheeks were pink, the skin below her collarbones. She always blushed at the worst times. No delicate pink wash, just an angry red. “And I have freckles.”

Now why had she said that?

Devil blinked, his mouth caught between a smirk and a promise of something darker and more delicious. “Pardon?” he said again.

She refused to repeat herself. Bad enough to be an idiot once.

“I happen to like freckles,” he murmured.

She shot him a look. There were no fewer than three advertising sandwich boards being carried about by peddlers across the street at this very moment, all selling various concoctions promising to eradicate bothersome freckles forever. Arsenic washes. Lead paste. Lemon water—which she knew from experience the summer she was twelve years old did not work and only broke her out in an itchy rash.

Devil did not take her seriously. She could hardly blame him. She’d acted a breathless ninny ever since he backed her into her own shop. And before that he had seen her stumble across a rooftop, run through London barefoot, and wrestle a hedgehog in a gold cage out of a tree. She was not precisely daunting, as far as adversaries went.

Yet…

She was a bookseller. She knew account books and costs and percentages. Profit. The value of a thing.

“I have something you want,” she said.

“Yes.” There were threads glittering through his tone that she could not decipher. “Though I can do without Worthing’s stable of horses.”

“But still, it’s what was promised to you. I imagine if I went about showing the Ton how easy it was to steal from the Devil, that would cause problems for you.”

“Careful.” It was a quiet growl, no less effective for its softness.

She swallowed. “Yes, well, as I said, I have something you want. And you have something I need.”

“I’m gratified to hear it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not that.”

It was clear no one had rolled their eyes at him in a very long time either.

She was out of her depth.

Oh well. Sink or swim.

“I will give you the vowel,” she said.

“I know.”

She frowned at him. “You are vexing.”