Page 44 of A Deal with the Devil

Chapter Eleven

The party was as awful as Kitty assumed it would be.

As a harbinger of doom, the carriage ride over was suitably ominous. The hired hackney smelled like fish pies and cheroot smoke. Her father was already thoroughly soused and stumbled climbing up the steps, ripping the knee of his breeches. Aunt Priscilla vibrated with barely concealed nerves and outrage that Kitty still refused to divulge Evie’s whereabouts.

Kitty just wanted to get there so she could get home again and crawl under the coverlet with her newest romantic novel. The monster hero was a Minotaur and oddly kind.

She would have preferred a Minotaur to anything this night had to offer.

She wore her best gown, which she knew perfectly well was nowhere near good enough for a dinner party at an earl’s townhouse. It was a cheerful yellow, paired with her only pair of elbow-length gloves. It was the same one she had worn to the Devil’s Night.

“I wish you’d have let me scrub away some of those freckles,” Aunt Priscilla muttered. The closer they got to Grosvenor Square, the sharper her edges.

“That’s not how freckles work, Aunt P.”

“Well, they make you look dirty. And don’t call me Aunt P among the beau monde.”

“Yes, Aunt P.” Kitty softened the response with a small smile. She was nervous too. Regrettably. She would never let them know it, the way no one would see her exhaustion or anger when washing splatters off her shop windows.

“I don’t have to remind you how important tonight is,” her aunt charged on.

But she would.

“It’s your fault, you know. If you would just tell us where Evie—”

“I don’t know,” Kitty replied.

“And I don’t know how my brother raised such an ungrateful liar.”

Aunt Priscilla elbowed the baron so hard that he woke with a shout of “One more round, I’m good for it, I swear.” He blinked at his family. “Eh?”

It might have been funny if it weren’t so aggravating. At least that was one thing Kitty and her aunt agreed on, if their exchanged glance was anything to go by.

“Oh, get yourself together, Francis,” Aunt Priscilla snapped. “Honestly, you’ve become worse than even our grandfather was. And they wrote a song about him at the village pub.”

“Every gentleman has a tipple or two.”

“You stink of the alehouse. Gentlemen drink wine.”

It went without saying that they could not afford wine.

“Kitty’s little shop is doing well enough—she could buy me some wine.” His eyes were mournful. “Eh, tabby-cat?”

Kitty looked outside, focusing on the lights of Grosvenor Square. They poured from the windows, swung from the dozens and dozens of carriages clogging the street, flickered from artfully placed torches. It was something out of a fairy tale: grand houses of pale stone, warm honey light, glittering glass windows. People poured out of the painted carriages in silk gowns, snowy cravats, diamonds flashing, gold buttons gleaming. It did not even smell like London; here it was beeswax and perfume and gardens thick with lilies and roses.

She had never wanted to be anywhere less.

Oh well. Frying pan into the fire, as they said.

The townhouse was a perfect gilded treasure. Elegant, sophisticated.

With a heart of rot.

By the time Kitty had given her cloak to a footman, her father had already vanished into the back parlor where the card games were underway. Her aunt shot her one steely warning glare and went to greet Lord Portsmouth with effusive deference. It was hard to watch. He turned in Kitty’s direction, and she curtsied, bile rising in her throat. There was something deeply cruel to the way he smiled. Something not right.

Music spilled through the shining rooms, played by an orchestra hidden behind a screen of ivy in the ballroom. The air was hot and sweet. Kitty knew not a single soul.

Not a single soul who would admit to knowing her, that was.