Page 31 of A Deal with the Devil

It was all of the paint she had and was going to cost a fortune to replace. Someone across the street laughed. “You scared me!” Kitty said before the trio could react to the laugh, which in her experience never improved matters.

“You little—” The taller one took a threatening step closer, then wobbled, too much port in his system and too much paint in his left eye.

“I’m so sorry.” Kitty fluttered her hands helplessly. “You ran into me!”

“Where is he?”

“Who? Oh dear, here let me help you.” She waved a rag soaked with spirit of turpentine, which she used to clean her brushes right under their noses. They recoiled as one.

The taller one gagged. “Get off.”

“It will get the paint off your face.” And it would burn like hell. Serve them right.

“Never mind her—let’s go, before this stains my coat.” Too late.

“It’s in my hair.”

They hurried away, and Kitty watched them until they were out of view. Her startled, concerned expression turned sharp. “Mayfair jackasses.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.” Their victim hovered in the mouth of the alley, wielding a broken plank from a packing box. His left eye was already swelling and roughly the color of a boiled beet. The wall was holding most of his weight. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Kitty said. “Come inside and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

“I couldn’t…”

“They might double back. I would not put their getting lost past them in their state.”

He winced, lowering his makeshift weapon. “True.”

Kitty helped him inside to the corner by the coal grate, where she kept supplies for just this sort of thing: comfrey for poultices, bandages, vinegar. A small bottle of gin that tasted remarkably like the vinegar.

He sat with a groan. “Aren’t you going to ask my name?”

“Not as a rule, no,” she replied, pouring water into a dish and handing it to him with a clean strip of cloth. “Here, it will hurt less if you wash the blood off by yourself.” She turned him toward the cracked mirror.

He wiped at his face, poking at the mess of colors blooming above his eye. “I’ve heard of this place,” he said, quietly. “I didn’t know if you’d be open so late.”

“Sometimes I am.”

“You heard what they said about me.”

She lifted her chin. “Makes no difference to me whom you love, and it says more about them than about you.”

He blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. You are not the first to find his way here for that reason.”

“You can’t just go about dumping paint on Mayfair lords like that.”

“Can and shall. Anyway, to see you leaving a molly house would place him at the molly house too, wouldn’t it?”

He opened his mouth, shut it. “You ought to be a barrister. Better yet, a judge.” His smile turned sly. “But really, the molly house part is less what got under his skin. It’s more that I also stole his lady’s attention last week.” He flinched, working his jaw. “Goddamn it, that hurts.”

“I draw the line at pulling teeth,” Kitty informed him. Not only would she likely cast up her accounts, but he was in good enough spirits and seemed the type to prefer a joke over a pat on the head. He wasn’t in dire straits and could certainly afford to pay for a dentist. She had been a convenient port in the storm and was glad for that. It made everything else bearable.

“Thank you,” he said again. “Truly.”

“I’m happy to help.”