Page 3 of A Deal with the Devil

She’d happily climb into hell to save her sister. Or trip into it, as it were.

She quickened her pace, heading for the main formal staircase, which she had no business using as a bookseller hired to provide party favors. She ought to stick to the servant stairs in the back. But since the marquis had just been caught abducting women and hiding them in his cellar, Kitty was not too bothered with whether he considered her an uncouth upstart. More dark entertainment for a Devil’s Night.

She darted up the first step, the second, and then crashed right into Devil.

It was like bouncing off a mountain. A handsome, suspicious mountain who smelled very good. She tried to catch herself. She assumed he would be as pampered as the other earls she had seen with calf padding in their stockings and in the shoulders of their coats.

Not quite.

She tumbled, tripping over her own feet with a little more genuineness than she had planned. She half sprawled against the railing, the oak scrollwork digging into her shoulder blades. “I beg your pardon!” she said, rubbing at her elbow that had hit at just the wrong angle and sent painful tingles down her arm.

Devil looked down at her, aloof green eyes cold and distrustful. Knowing. Noticing every detail: her dress, which was her best but still nowhere near good enough, the ink on her fingers, which were gloveless because her gloves itched, her lack of rubies. Down to the mending at the top of her left stocking, which she knew on a rational level that he could not see through her skirts but which her body was entirely convinced was possible.

She had not thought being this close to him would affect her, even though his magnetism was palpable. A reaction to his presence was primal. Lions did not walk among gazelles without effect.

Kitty had never seen a gazelle, but she fancied she knew exactly how they felt.

Devil straightened his coat, checked his pockets. Satisfied that nothing was missing, he nodded at her once. He did not say a word, even as he reached down to grip her arm and pull her up.

And that was when she stole from the Devil himself.

Last night…

It had taken Devil nearly a month to find her. Him, a veritable devil, and she, a bookseller.

It was embarrassing.

Infuriating.

He who hosted extravagant evenings across England once a year, with every temptation and entertainment scattered like dandelions in a field. He held the bank and the vowels and no quarter was given on a Devil’s Night. No exceptions made. Not for king or duke or beautiful woman. God himself could lose a bet and Devil would find a way to make him pay.

All to one purpose.

Which had nothing to do with gambling or wagering or fortunes. Devil did not even particularly enjoy playing cards. But he did enjoy winning, and he enjoyed power most of all.

Like hell would he see it undone by a redheaded menace.

She had stolen from him.

Stealing from the Devil was not something that could be ignored. Admired, perhaps. If begrudgingly.

But not ignored.

Never ignored.

It was not a precedent he could afford to set. Even if the lady in question had snapping gray eyes and a very distracting trail of freckles.

Especially then.

They had exchanged a grand total of three polite sentences at the Devil’s Night hosted by the Marquis of Eastbourne, before the marquis was dragged away for keeping ladies in his cellar in order to control their fortunes. It had been both a duty and a true pleasure to help take him down. Though credit was mostly due to Lady Clara Prescott and her retired sea captain. Devil believed in proper credit. And debts paid. He had built his reputation on it. Fearsome, exacting, and without the need to defend it for the past few years, beyond the odd attempt on his life from some desperate gambler in over his head.

And now here he was in the dead of night, skulking through a bookshop that seemed to cater to the kinds of stories that were decidedly frowned upon for the good ladies of the ton. Ordinarily, he would have been impressed. Amused.

If he weren’t already so damned irritated.

The walls were the blue of a Scottish loch, details of the chipped plasterwork picked out in gold. They were not the only things gleaming in the uncertain light of the lampposts outside.

True to its name, the Golden Griffin Bookshop was full of griffins.