Page 36 of A Deal with the Devil

“Give them your broom.”

She handed over the broom with embarrassingly quick compliance. “That’s very kind of you,” she said to the nearest Viking brother.

“I’m the one telling them to clean it up,” Devil muttered.

“Yes, but they’re the ones actually doing it, and believe me, it’s not pleasant work.” She smiled at them again. “Would you like some tea? Maybe a slice of cake?” She did not have cake and could not afford it.

“No, thank you, your ladyship.”

Kitty snorted as she turned back inside. “I’m not one of his aristo ladies. Kitty will do fine.”

“Miss Caldecott will do fine,” Devil told them. “And don’t look at her like that. She’s not the damned cake.”

Kitty poked her head outside, positively beaming. “Someone thinks I’m cake?”

Devil almost looked amused. Almost. He landed somewhere between exasperated and tolerant. She would have argued for the pleasure of arguing, but that would have also meant cleaning up the soupy mess on the front step. No, thank you. She was too tired for that sort of nonsense.

And she was most definitely too tired for the mess that greeted her inside the shop. Someone had broken in while she drank two pots of tea and tried not feel as though she were drowning.

Someone with very little regard for books. Fury and fear chased each other up her spine, like cats with their claws out. “Bollocks.”

It was all she had time to say before Devil yanked her right off her feet, shoving her behind him. “Outside.”

“I doubt anyone is lingering.”

“Outside,” he ordered her. “Godric,” he added to one of the brothers, “check the back alley. Wulf, keep an eye on Miss Caldecott.”

Kitty was abruptly standing on the stoop with her very own gigantic Northman shield. London was immediately wilder, darker. Parasols and footmen and little white dogs on diamond leashes may as well have been on the moon. This was the purview of footpads and housebreakers and men who lurked in the shadows.

“Clear,” Devil called, and some of the tingling apprehension pumping through her bloodstream abated. She shivered.

“Thank you, Wulf,” she managed before marching back into her shop.

The view had not improved. One shelf was pushed over. Her teapot was in shards, her inkwell turned over on the desk. Books lay scattered everywhere, delicate pages in disarray. The rage she felt could have rivalled the sun. To throw fruit or fish bones was one thing. Insults scrawled in paint she could handle. Lectures, disdain. They were nothing.

These were her books.

“Are you crying?” Devil sounded just as hard as he usually did, but also concerned. Un-devilish.

“I am furious,” Kitty said through her teeth as she wiped her eyes. “Tears do not quite cover the bloodthirsty vengeance I mean to have.”

“Good girl.”

She nearly punched him. She also nearly purred. It was very confusing. Chalk it up to the events of the last few days.

Then she decided she might quite like to punch him after all. He caught her first before it could connect—of course he did.

“Don’t patronize me,” she said. She was breathless. Entirely because of the anger, of course. It could not possibly be for any other reason.

“I assure you, I wasn’t. I meant every word.”

She honestly didn’t know if that was better or worse. He was still holding her fist. She was quite sure he was more accustomed to kissing the back of ladies’ knuckles, not catching wild swings at his pretty face. Why was he so blasted pretty?

“Has this happened before?” he asked quietly.

There was a first-edition book by his boot. She made a tiny sound of horror. Monsters had been here. There was no other explanation.

“Kitty?”