Page 33 of A Deal with the Devil

It was Lord Portsmouth.

She would take the iron pipe over the perfumed pomade, the entitled ennui, the cold entitlement in his eyes. An iron pipe might be reasoned with, might be bought off, eventually.

Kitty tried to smile like a woman who was not hiding her little sister. “Lord Portsmouth.”

He looked down his nose at her. There was cruelty under the cold beauty, an utter disregard of consequences because he had never had to grapple with them. “Miss Caldecott.”

When she did not immediately move out of his way, nor invite him inside, his mouth tightened with annoyance. The kind of noble annoyance that razed a village because it blocked the view of the river from the ancestral manor. His dead ancestors all rolled in their graves at once over her insolence.

“Kitty, for heaven’s sake,” Aunt Priscilla snapped, followed by her best smile in Lord Portsmouth’s direction. “Let the earl in. Where are your manners?”

Kitty stepped aside.

“Would you care for some tea?” Aunt Priscilla led the way to the parlor. “Kitty, ring the bell,” she added, even though there was no one to ring the bell for.

“Claret,” Lord Portsmouth demanded. “I’m on my way to my club,” he said to Kitty’s father, who had risen with a jovial, if nervous, smile. All his smiles had been nervous since Kitty’s mother had succumbed to that winter fever. “Where is your daughter? I don’t like having my plans disregarded. We ought to be married already.”

“Of course, of course,” the baron agreed. Sweat gathered at his hairline.

Aunt Priscilla shot him an irritated glare before turning back to the earl. “I do apologize, my lord. You know how girls get. Evangeline wanted everything to be perfect.”

“Where is she?”

Aunt Priscilla glanced at Kitty, who stayed silent. Her aunt forced a laugh. “The little minx has gone to Paris, can you believe it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Surely Lord Portsmouth was aware that they could not afford a trip to the other end of London, never mind Paris. Evie had no dowry, for heaven’s sake.

“She wanted a trousseau fit for a countess,” Aunt Priscilla pressed on. “Something you would be proud of. She won’t be but a fortnight.”

A trousseau? Evie had a single hedgehog to her name.

“I don’t care to wait a fortnight.”

“It will give us time to plan something lovely—a ceremony in the local church, perhaps?” Lord Portsmouth’s local church was St. George’s. Shopkeeper’s daughters did not marry at St. George’s. Despite the very fine lineages of their grooms.

If Lord Portsmouth’s posture got any straighter, his spine would snap in two. A woman could dream.

“What game is this?” he snapped.

“No game, no game,” Kitty’s father rushed in to assure him. “Just a girl with nerves, nothing to worry about.”

“We had an agreement.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I don’t care to be kept waiting.”

“If you cannot wait, Portsmouth,” Kitty’s father said hopefully, “I do have another daughter.”

Lord Portsmouth barely glanced at Kitty. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s far too old.”

She was ten years older than her sister, true. Which still made her fifteen years younger than he was. She did not point it out. Nor did she point out the fact that she would rather swim naked in the Thames in August than marry him. She bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood.

“Two weeks,” Lord Portsmouth said, “or I take everything and have them toss you in debtor’s prison. Your daughters too. And your widow of a sister.”

Her father would not survive debtor’s prison.

The earl stormed out, fuming.

Aunt Priscilla turned on Kitty. “Now do you see what you’ve done?”