Page 9 of A Deal with the Devil

“Good. Because you cannot be serious. He’s vile.”

“He’s an earl.” As if that forgave anything. Everything. For her aunt, it did. “And don’t call me Aunt P—it’s vulgar.”

“He’s had three wives who all died within a year of the wedding!”

Kitty was quite serious about burning down those carriages. She would prefer to wait until Lord Portsmouth was inside, but she would also happily go out and do it right now and save everyone the bother.

Her aunt caught her arm, painfully digging nails into her skin. “You are not Evangeline’s guardian.”

“I wish I was. I would never sell her.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. Rumors, gossip. It means nothing. The lower classes always talk.”

Coming from a woman who wielded gossip like a sword. And had come from the very same lower classes.

“Three dead wives is not idle chatter.”

“Childbirth is dangerous.”

“One of them drowned.”

“So is swimming.”

“She drowned in a very shallow pond.” Kitty wanted to scream.

“We need him, Kitty,” Aunt P said. “He does not care about her lack of dowry and has offered us a proper townhouse in St. James’s Square. St. James’s Square. And he has been nothing but courteous to your sister. And to me. He thinks she is beautiful. Angelic.”

“We don’t need him,” Kitty said stubbornly.

“The only gold we have left to our name is your sister’s hair.”

“Evie deserves better.”

“We all do,” Aunt P said bitterly. “Tell that to your father and his debts.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Kitty asked as the rain tapped at the window. “She’s not here.”

She could not wait much longer to follow Evie. The roof would turn slippery, and Evie’s knee was still healing. By the end of most days she needed a cane to support herself, despite their aunt shrieking about it interfering with the line of her gowns. Evie had wrapped it with white silk roses in a kind of compromise. Kitty made a note to take it from where it was poking out from under the bed. Galahad liked to bat at the flowers, and he was stronger than a little ball of spikes had any right to be. Kitty had once found the cane halfway down the stairs by tripping over it and nearly breaking her entire body. Perhaps that might work on Lord Portsmouth.

“I shall find an excuse,” Aunt Priscilla hissed. “While you find your sister.”

“Of course, Aunt P.”

Her aunt narrowed her eyes, clearly suspicious.

Fair enough.

Kitty wouldn’t have believed her either.

Devil ought to have sent one of his men to do this work.

He did not often break into shops or skulk through early morning gardens. Anymore, that was.

But Miss Caldecott intrigued him.

Even if the gold paint from one of her bloody griffins had already proven impossible to scrub out of his cuff. His valet would make that noise in the back of his throat, like a peacock caught in a storm.

And now here Devil was, leaning against a tree, rain dripping all around him.

He could be wrapped in silk sheets and softer skin, awake because he’d had too good a time to sleep—not awake because he was hunting a sly fox of a woman.

He refused to acknowledge the fact that this gray morning was already proving to be more interesting than his usual pursuits. That there was a shot of excitement he had not felt in too long. Opulence, risks, beauty. He had gorged on it.

This was something else.

Curiosity and another twinge of some emotion he could not—or would not—name kept him where he was.

Watching her.

Hunting.

He paused. Cursed.

Why was the bloody woman on the roof?