Page 50 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
He snagged her wrist before she could leave, his fingerstightening into a manacle. “I want another go,” he said, squinting at her beneath the soggy cloth. “In a time and place of my choosing.”
“Another…go?” Did he mean…?
“When I’m in a better condition for it. Since you’ve maimed me and all. Seems fair.”
It did seem fair. Or maybe that strange haze that had fogged her mind had not cleared yet. Certainly her lips still tingled, and her heart still raced. Perhaps she had simply enjoyed herself too much to refuse outright. Perhaps she would have seized upon any excuse which had been presented to her. “All right,” she said, and she wondered if the words had sounded as throaty to his ears as they had to her own. “Another go.”
Another kiss.
∞∞∞
“Your brother is a terrible patient,” Phoebe grumbled over tea.
“That should hardly come as a surprise,” Emma said. “He’s not known for his agreeable disposition. I imagine it pricks his pride something awful to be confined to his bed.”
Confinedwas a strong word. Against advice, against pleading and scolding and threatening and cajoling, he’d slipped out of bed at least a dozen times in the past week. Torn his stitches twice before they’d been removed. Shouted, complained, and sulked. A worse patient she’d never seen and hoped never to see again, if only because his poor temper had worn against her patience and she was swiftly approaching the very last thread of it.
“But it will pass,” Emma added as she stirred a lump of sugarinto her tea. “Now that his fever has abated and the wound has closed properly, he’ll be on the mend in earnest.”
“Yes,” Phoebe said sullenly. “Until the next time someone makes an attempt on his life.”
Emma winced. “It does seem to happen with alarming regularity,” she said. “I’d not be so worried—”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Until just recently,” Emma clarified, “Kit has been perfectly capable of defending himself. Oh, he might come out of a scrape with a new scar for his pains, but his position was a dangerous one even before he was a spy. It takes a great deal of strength and determination to wield a power like his, and he’s grown up rougher than most.”
In the rookeries, Phoebe thought. In the slums, fighting and thieving for every pence, every scrap of food that might sustain him for another day. She had lived such a sheltered life, insulated from every evil, every unpleasantness—she could hardly understand it.
“I suppose,” Emma said, “that for many years, such attempts have simply been…the cost of doing business, so to speak. An irritating consequence, but one to which he gave little thought.”
Until he’d been arrested and falsely accused of treason. Beaten, bloodied—torturedby those who were meant to have been his allies. Until the injuries he’d sustained had not been something that could be healed by a few weeks spent convalescing in bed. It had taken something from him, that ordeal. His security. The ability to walk comfortably without the assistance of a cane.
“He’s told me some of it,” she said. “About his childhood.” The mouse he’d befriended who lived within the walls. “About his kidsman. Scratch. He said—he said he’d killed him,” she admitted.
“I never asked,” Emma said. “But I suppose I assumed.Difficult to imagine someone more deserving of it.” A shudder slid down her spine. “Scratch wasn’t the last kidsman he’s disposed of, I suspect. But there’s always another to crop up in their wake. Filling a vacancy, I suppose, though Kit’s been doing his best to put a stop to it.”
“How?” Phoebe asked.
“He brings me children when he finds them,” Emma said. “One less to fill out their ranks each time. And if I can get them to talk of it, he tracks down their kidsmen. Gives them the chance to leave London of their own volition.”
“Or?” Phoebe asked, though she thought she already knew.
“Or…to invite his wrath, I suppose. I’ve always known his version of morality is somewhat more flexible than my own.”
A delicate way of phrasing it.
“But I can’t disagree with the outcome,” Emma said. “Fewer children on the streets. Fewer kidsmen taking advantage of children in wretched situations. Fewer children jailed, transported, hanged.” She sighed. “But the kidsmen are growing wise to it,” she said. “And the children are less willing to speak. Just occasionally, I’ll hear them whispering to one another, those children that have come to me from street gangs. As if whispers are as loud as they dare to speak of them.”
Like one might speak of a ghost. Or a bogeyman. “He said the children used to spread stories of Scratch,” Phoebe offered. “Like a frightening tale to keep one another in line. Even after he died, still they claimed to have seen him.”
Emma offered a sheepish smile. “I thought I saw him once, too,” she admitted, abashed. “When I was just a child, after he’d—well, you know. He was a dreadful man, with a habit of instilling fear however he could. Quick to give a slap or a cuff, even at the most minor of infractions. My acquaintance with him lasted only three days, and Kit was careful to keep his attention away from me as much as he could—but, oh, I had nightmares ofhim for months afterward.” She shivered as if the memory was still quite fresh, then shook herself as if to rid her mind of the thought. “But enough of that,” she said. “My brother is treating you well?”
“He’s snappish,” Phoebe said, “and ill-tempered.” But not cruel. Or even neglectful, or apathetic. And even when he was irritable, which had been often just lately, still it hadn’t been directedather so much as at his present situation. Sometimes—most times—she thought he must like her at least a little.
“He’s usually that,” Emma said, with a roll of her eyes. “Just…with varying degrees of severity. One does grow accustomed to it.”
She had not merely grown accustomed to it; she had shoutedbackwhen the situation required it, when once she had caught him at trying to escape his convalescence too early. And he had backed down. Crawled back into bed. Heaved a longsuffering sigh and acquiesced to her demands.
