Page 53 of A Deal with the Devil

“And have you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

“Truly?”

“Yes.”

“And are you going to help me find Lady Caroline?” she asked.

“Are you going to let me do it alone?”

“Absolutely not. I’m perfectly happy to take Portsmouth down. But I won’t put you in danger to do it.”

She shrugged one shoulder, let it fall. “That doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

The woman was a menace.

This was not a new revelation—he already knew she was a menace—but she insisted on proving it at every opportunity. Climbing up buildings, sneaking into Portsmouth’s house. Already finding out more about his last wife than the magistrates or constables had managed.

Coming on Devil’s fingers, gasping and clenching around him. It had taken every ounce of resolve to stop when he found the note. And that was only because fear for her was like a dousing of icy water down the back of his neck.

Who knew what Lord Portsmouth would have done to her?

Nothing good, not with his infatuation with her sister. Not with his character. Devil had seen rats among the corpses on the battlefield at Waterloo whom he would trust more than fucking Portsmouth.

It was not a secret that his wives had all perished under convenient circumstances. Kitty was right to be scared for her sister. She ought to be terrified.

If only fear proved a deterrent for Miss Kitty Caldecott. He already knew it would not.

And now he had claimed her for his own.

It had felt too right, thrumming through him like fate, which he did not believe in. But she was his now. That, he believed in.

And he would protect her. He had done things on the Continent that Portsmouth could not dream of. He might be a threat, a murderer.

Devil was worse. London knew it.

But perhaps it was time for a reminder. He did not have time for missing shipments or broken doors.

And he definitely did not have the patience for threats against Kitty.

It hardly mattered why, or that he had known her for less than a month all told. He knew it in his gut, and he had learned long ago to listen to primal instinct. He had met her once before but she did not remember it. He did. He recalled it quite clearly: she had marched up to Brutus, who was collecting vowels and payments for wagers and listening to her father’s pitiful excuses. Devil had not bothered to listen; he had heard them all before. The baron was pleading and sweating. Nothing new.

Until Kitty had marched into the club, which very specifically did not allow women, glared at her father, and then handed a pouch of coins to Brutus. “It’s all there,” she said, lifting her voice so Devil could hear her, as if he had not leaned forward to get a better look at the woman with the red curls and the gray eyes that threatened to burn the building down around them. He remembered there were ink stains on her fingers. A mended tear in the hem of her dress.

“That’s the last of it,” she snapped at the baron. “Tell Aunt P to leave Evie out of it.”

And then she marched away without a single backward glance at the men staring at her, at her father, even at Devil. He did not think she had even noticed him.

Magnificent.

And then she had picked his bloody pocket. Let him kiss her in her bookshop, let him touch her in his carriage until he was so hard he had genuine concern over injuring himself.

And now he was back at that same club, not the Sins, just one of the many that catered to gentlemen’s entertainment. It had become his favorite haunt since that day, all because of her. Worrying.

But fine as long as no one else noticed.