Page 65 of A Deal with the Devil

She nodded. “I have currant rolls in the back. I’ll get you one.”

“Thank you, Kitty. You’ve always been a good daughter.”

A good daughter who should have known better.

When she returned with the last roll, her father was gone.

So was her lockbox with her money.

Kitty wanted to throw things.

She wanted to rail and rant.

She wanted to cry.

She did none of those things. For one, it would have alerted Wulf, who would have wanted to know what was wrong. And he would tell Devil.

And there was nothing anyone could do that would make a lick of difference to the fact that her father had stolen from her.

Again.

He was obviously panicking—that was the only time he rifled through her trunks at home or came to the shop with teary, hopeful eyes. It was her fault for being distracted. She knew better than to leave him alone with the shop’s money. She knew better.

It made her feel a hundred years old and with iron for bones. Like the entire bookshop was suddenly perched on her shoulders, pressing down, down, down.

At the least old man with the placard hadn’t even tried to spit on her when she arrived. Last month he had thrown soup at Kitty. He was very old, and so she could not even throw the clay bowl back at his head. Once Devil broke their betrothal, she would have to find a better way to keep the rabble from her door. Sharp sticks. A spear. A trebuchet, maybe. A friendly pig who would eat the slop with glee.

Meanwhile, she would salvage the day. She could sit here worrying about Evie, staring out the window for Portsmouth’s men, mad at her father—worse, disappointed—or any of the thousand tasks that needed doing, or she could forge on with her investigation. Her plans and plots and conspiracies. Her one tiny, hard-won lead.

Lord Tadworth was a collector and a recluse who had turned down every letter, every invitation, every request and offer Kitty had ever sent over the years. She tried to form some sort of connection to most avid book lovers as a matter of course, but he did not like to leave his mansion and he liked visitors even less.

Devil, of course, was not in the habit of taking no as an answer. Mostly because so few people offered it.

Not only did he receive an invitation for tea, but it included a tour of Lord Tadworth’s extensive and famous library.

It was irritating.

Devil was likely to agree as she marched to his club to inform him of his new plans for the afternoon.

The Seven Deadly Sins pleasure hall was exactly as extravagant as it should be.

The building itself took up almost as much space as the palace the prince was building for himself. It gleamed white, with fluted columns on either side of the red door and above the portico. There were roses, marble urns, ivy growing up the walls.

Kitty stepped through the iron archway, past the steps leading down to the coal bins and the delivery entrance. The front door was painted red, because a house associated with the devil must surely have a red door. Everything else was expected: soaring columns and carved pediments and freshly washed glass gleaming. No brimstone or writhing souls to be found.

Not even a sign declaring members had found the right place. Only a door knocker in the shape of a flame. And the sounds of construction within, the smell of sawdust and paint.

She had never been here, of course. Ladies did not visit men unchaperoned. Or at all. And certainly not at an already-infamous pleasure hall. And while she was not technically a lady of the Ton, their rules still dogged her steps. Still, she was not an aristocrat, and she had never had a chaperone, even as a young woman. And now she was twenty-nine years old and firmly on the shelf.

But also betrothed.

Her already complicated life had certainly gotten even more complicated of late. A sinfully handsome earl tended to do that.

The door swung open before she could dwell on it further or give in to the nerves that were inconveniently swirling in her belly. She was Kitty Caldecott, Purveyor of Filth and Moral Threat to the Decency of Good Society Everywhere. She could greet a butler of a place named after the Deadly Sins and bully the Devil.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully to said butler. He was made entirely of muscle. And teeth.

“I’m afraid the earl is not accepting callers, Miss…?” She could not place his accent. It was soft and lovely.