Page 7 of A Deal with the Devil

Chapter Two

Kitty peered out of the window down to the street below and cursed.

Deeply.

Blasphemously.

The vicar would have fainted at her feet before she even plucked the badger-fur toupee from his head.

Evie’s eyes widened. “I shall have to remember that one.”

“Best not. We can only afford one family disgrace,” Kitty said wryly, despite her heart beating in her throat where it had no business being. “Find your own scandal.”

Evie snorted a laugh even though there was no time for it. But they always managed to find a way to make each other laugh. Kitty had made a game of their dispossession all those years ago.

Evie frowned through the glass. “That’s odd. Why did Lord Portsmouth bring a second carriage?”

Kitty’s heart thrummed again, momentarily choking her. She swallowed down the fear, shoving it out of the way so she could breathe. So she could think. “I believe he has forgone the courtship altogether.”

Evie shivered. “What does that mean?”

“It means that it is your trunk I see being carried out by his outrider.” A flutter in Kitty’s chest, this time mostly fueled by rage. An improvement. She could do many more impossible things with rage.

“Who has that many outriders while in London?” Evie said slowly.

“Those intending on traveling all the way to Gretna Green, if I were to hazard a guess.” Outriders were used for trips into the country where any manner of inconvenience might be found, from highwaymen to broken carriage wheels.

Evie sucked in a breath. “Father is letting him abduct me to Scotland? For an anvil wedding? Surely not.”

“Definitely Aunt P’s idea. So that your reputation will be ruined before you even arrive and you will have no choice.” If Kitty was mercenary, her aunt was downright ruthless. And their father capitulated, as always.

Kitty had never truly hated her family before, not really. She was perilously close at the moment.

Another reason she was nowhere near as good as her sister. But let her sister be the kind one, the good one. In the meantime, Kitty would set both carriages on fire.

Gleefully.

“I won’t marry him,” Evie said quietly.

“Too right, you won’t,” Kitty agreed. “For one thing, I have every intention of committing murder before that ever happens.”

“Perhaps we might start with running away,” Evie said with the same dry tone she had learned from Kitty. She pulled a small valise form under her bed.

“How long have you had that packed?” Kitty asked, pride shoving her heart back down into her chest where it belonged. Evie was not a little girl anymore. And she was so much more astute than anyone gave her credit for.

“Since Aunt P pushed me in front of that carriage.”

They exchanged a grim smile. “Well done, you,” Kitty said, shoving down the guilt and frustration over not doing a better job at protecting her sister. The anger she felt at her father for not being stronger, her aunt kinder. “Hurry.”

Evie might be kind and beautiful, with a voice soft as kitten feet, but she was also the untidiest person Kitty had ever met. She had seen overturned carts in Covent Garden that were better organized.

In this case, it at least offered a cloak draped over a plant slowly suffocating under the resulting lack of sunlight. There were no longer any housemaids to tidy up after them. There had not been for a couple of years now. Though Kitty had made a reasonable success of her grandmother’s bookshop, despite her mother’s insistence that their history in trade was something to sweep under the rug posthaste, it was still not enough to allow them the same luxuries as their previous fortune had briefly done. When their mother died, their father had no one to temper his gambling.

And as it turned out, he was not particularly good at it. He was too trusting. Too desperate.

The bookshop was the only thing that had saved them from outright ruin. Along with selling everything they owned of any value. Except for the diamonds and pearls that Aunt P hid from creditors and gaming hell thugs in places Kitty had no wish to consider.

“Put this on.” Kitty shoved the thick velvet at Evie. She could practically hear the plant gasping for breath as it was freed. “There’s no time for you to get dressed.” Not with two carriages waiting outside. And not with their father employing that particular laugh before nine o’clock in the morning. The one that clearly heralded he was in over his head. Floundering.