Page 40 of A Deal with the Devil

When Devil left the bookshop, the ensuing silence had a different quality, as if it too knew what was suddenly missing. As if it remembered him, taking up all of the space without even trying. The smell of incense. The air crackling the way it did before a storm. The cup in Kitty’s hand was warm, the tea a comforting aroma.

He had sent for tea. For her.

She did not understand him.

Her fingers tightened on the glazed clay. It was sweetened with milk and sugar. She had not had both milk and sugar together in her tea for months, including her two pots guzzled just that morning. A small thing considering the state of, well, everything. But an important thing. Because he had thought of it.

She was very close to smiling into the tea. She was simpering over hot water and leaves. She set it down with a decisive thud. Picked it up for one more sip. Back down.

Time to get to work.

Sorting books was soothing. Cataloguing damage to books was infuriating. The combination was exhausting. Still, it kept her from fretting about Evie. A little.

Barely.

She was very good at doing several things at once. She could juggle three disasters at the same time. If only it were a merchantable skill. She got the shop back to rights and then tackled the mess of the last estate sale purchase. She often hired a Mr. Mayhew to purchase on her behalf. He traveled more easily, not being tied to a shop or a sister. And he was a man. As a woman, she was sometimes not even allowed inside the auction house. And when she was, she had to spend most of her time dodging sales tactics and suggestive smirks. “Accidental” brushes against her backside.

It was a good lot: mostly books, with very few knickknacks. She still had a collection of glass ferrets from the time that lady had refused to part with her dead aunt’s book collection unless Kitty also took her ferret collection. They were rather disconcerting, with eyes that followed you everywhere and teeth made of bone. When Aunt Priscilla was being particularly…well, herself, Kitty hid them in her bedroom as a little surprise.

Sometimes revenge was a glass menagerie with painted eyeballs, strategically placed on a bedside table. Inside the chamber pot.

Kitty was particularly proud of that one. Aunt Priscilla’s shriek had echoed down the hallway. As she had just pushed Evie in front of a carriage, it was the very least Kitty could do.

Kitty crouched under the table to rescue a book shoved at a precarious angle against the tipped-over kettle. A small spill of water soaked into her sleeve, but thankfully, it had not reached the book. She backed out and flipped through the thin pages to be sure. Desires of the Duchess, volume two. A beloved staple for most of Kitty’s collection. Racy, courageous. Deeply and deliciously wicked.

Also defaced.

Someone had written in the book. It was clearly not by the thieves, who had broken in and then proceeded to not actually steal anything. The handwriting was bold, feminine. Slightly smudged, as though rushed, like the book had been shut tight before the ink was fully dried. A hasty scrawl, a note curious to find in the margins. Kitty was accustomed to notes in nature guides correcting the author’s translation of the botanical Latin (a surprisingly common occurrence), but it was less common in novels women hid under their beds. This was personal. Desperate.

I do not think it long now. I’ll be at the oak tree but have a care. We are none of us safe now.

No name from the writer or the intended reader, but when she shut the book, she recognized the name embossed on the cloth cover: Lady Caroline Portsmouth.

Lord Portsmouth’s third wife, missing and only presumed dead.

The Seven Deadly Sins was going to be a pleasure hall like no other.

Vauxhall Gardens had thousands of lamps and fireworks, supper boxes and the Rotunda, but it also struggled with the miasma of the Thames on hot summer days and rain on every other day.

The Sins was entirely contained in a Mayfair mansion Devil had confiscated in a wager on which a marquis had tried to renege.

There was no reneging on wagers placed during a Devil’s Night, and not at the Sins either. Every deadly sin would be represented: fine foods, willing companions, a boxing ring in the basement, roulette wheels and billiards tables above. Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Pride. None of it would be off-limits. Not at the Sins.

Just as soon as things stopped going wrong.

Which was not going to be today, clearly.

Devil’s brother Tom was in the foyer, bleary eyed with the hazards of too much wine or whiskey or both. And something else. “What the bloody hell happened to your face?” Devil demanded.

Tom winced. “Why are you shouting?”

“Why are you bleeding on my new floor?”

Tom blinked at his feet. “That’s not blood, that’s wine. I think.”

“And your face?”

“I was born handsome. You’re just jealous.”