Page 39 of A Deal with the Devil

Chapter Ten

What the hell was he doing?

Devil was lingering, and he never lingered.

Lingering usually meant tears or threats, begging or blustering, depending on the person. Assassination attempts more than once. There was a reason he traveled with his own men. Dodging bullets and blades became tiresome after a while.

But here he was, demanding filth be cleaned off shop windows and tea fetched for its owner, who might herself breathe fire if given half a chance. He did not hold good odds for whoever had broken into her shop. She would eviscerate them.

What was left of them, at any rate.

And it would be his pleasure to watch.

Anyone could see that Kitty would put herself between anyone who needed her and danger. He’d heard the stories of the Golden Griffin, not just the kinds of literature she sold to those bold enough to ask for it, but the fact that women who needed help tended to find their way to her. The ladies of Mayfair might have the Spinster Society, but there were others not fine enough to be able to march up to the front door of a London townhouse. Lady Priya would let them in, of that he had no doubt. But they were more comfortable coming round the back door of that odd little bookshop north of Mayfair.

Lady Priya collected secrets; Devil collected debts. Kitty collected strays.

She had been doing so long before their paths had crossed. Before she stole from him.

She knew how to take care of herself. She didn’t need him. He shouldn’t even be here. Especially not without his reclaimed vowel back in his hand. But he hadn’t been able to stop picturing her sliding across a rooftop at a dangerous speed. Or the way she had leapt between her and her sister in Priya’s side garden. That ridiculous hedgehog in a gold cage.

It was enough to addle any man.

It should not have been enough to addle him. He had seen too much, knew too much.

And yet she insisted on taking him by surprise.

Not to mention the way her lips parted when he claimed her mouth. The heat of her soft body. He was well past the age where a pretty face and a tart tongue should lead him in circles. Tell that to the rest of his body. There was a hunger searing through him such as he had never known.

He was a man of four and thirty. It was embarrassing, really.

Courtesans and debutantes and widows were constantly throwing themselves into his path, all perfumed breasts and salacious whispers, and he barely noticed anymore. But when Kitty tripped right into his life he was suddenly a poet? Thinking about her freckles like they were constellations of rare stars. Comparing the taste of her to oranges and spices from faraway lands.

Preposterous. He didn’t have a poetic bone in his body. Ask any of the numerous men who attempted to weasel their way out of a debt owed to him.

Devil watched Kitty for one more moment, not understanding why he was loath to leave. Finally, he bowed his head abruptly in farewell and stalked out the front door, feeling like an ass.

With poetry on the brain.

He was not ten feet from the door, between a lady with a ruffled parasol and a gentleman walking a small dog, when MacLeod joined him. “Trouble at the Sins,” he said. He was a short man in his late thirties, with a lightning-fast punch, a ready smile, and ladies constantly trailing him. Also a ragged scar across his throat from where a sword had nearly decapitated him. Men who returned home from the war were not safe, even in the fine streets of London.

“There’s always trouble somewhere,” Devil remarked. “How did you find me?”

MacLeod snorted. Fair enough. It was an insulting question. He might be the third son of a viscount, but he was also Devil’s first lieutenant, for lack of a better title now that they were no longer in the army. He knew the gaming tables and the aristocracy almost as well as Devil did. And liked them even less. “You’re up early,” he said.

Devil did not answer.

MacLeod glanced over his shoulder, spotted Godric at the bookshop door. “That’s a new position. Is it part of the standard rotation now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Devil, once again, did not answer. MacLeod smiled, slowly. The kind of smile that was just asking to be punched. “Shut it.”

“What about the Sins?”

“I’ll take care of it.”