Page 19 of A Deal with the Devil

Chapter Six

The Golden Griffin Bookshop and Circulating Library was Kitty’s refuge.

It was small and narrow, next to a teashop that always smelled delicious and across the street from a shop that sold enameled snuffboxes. Her mother’s family had run it since her grandmother’s mother was just a girl. They had sold plays, mostly Shakespeare then, with a brief foray into political tracts and travelogues.

Kitty was the one who had decided to focus on novels, especially those penned by women. With a secret side business of naughtier works readers would have been too mortified to ask for at the Temple of the Muses bookshop. The Temple might have several floors of tomes and novels and journals, more than Kitty could ever aspire to, as well as a very distinguished clientele, but she was fairly certain they did not have that.

Pity for them. It was great fun and paid her rent. And why shouldn’t women have their own amusements? She had no intention of floating through life like an angel or trapped high on a pedestal. People on pedestals could not save their sisters.

And they were not handed mysterious packages from the Spinster Society of “everything you might need for necessary mischief and mayhem.” With a farewell that consisted of a cheerful “Take no prisoners!”

She let the soothing, familiar smell of paper dust and vanilla soothe her. It was shadowy and quiet—a holy silence like inside a church, even as carriages jostled for space on the other side of the window and peddlers shouted of their wares, anything from baked potatoes to shoe polish and Pears soap. Here, she was safe. Here, anything was possible. Fae kings, dragons, krakens.

Freedom.

The shop was not particularly spacious, but there was a small reading room and she had painted everything a moody gray-blue and attacked every bit of trim with gold paint. When the candles were lit and the rain was at the window, it positively glowed. Gold griffins prowled over the ceiling, lurked in the back of bookshelves, peered from over the door like the friendly guardians she considered them to be.

Every time a pinched lady of the Ton or a vicar on a crusade decried the declining moral standards of the shop and of women in general, Kitty painted another griffin. When her own grandfather threw slimy vegetables at the window, she added a huge griffin on the outside wall, complete with his enormous walrus mustache. He took deep offense at how she handled the family business. But her grandmother had given it to her. Just as it had been left to her by her own mother, his very stubborn wife who chortled every time he bemoaned the fact that Kitty sold filth. No matter the strain in the relationship, the shouting or the disdain, the Griffin bookshop belonged to the Griffin women.

Her father deeply disapproved of Kitty being in trade, as a daughter to a baron, despite the fact that he had been granted a barony on the grounds of a bit of secret business gone fantastically—and accidentally—well.

And since that very same baron had squandered all of their money, he could keep his disapproval to himself. It would not buy tea. Or fish for supper.

Kitty pulled the curtains to let in the daylight and fell into the familiar, quiet bustle of the day. She sold the usual number of Byron’s poems, a steady supply of Pride and Prejudice by A Lady, and three copies of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women even after twenty-four years of being in print. She sold several more copies of Maria Edgeworth’s Letters for Literary Ladies because it was one of her favorites and she would not stop recommending it, along with the same writer’s novel Belinda.

After which three young ladies circled her desk, whispering to each other, eyes wide. Kitty waited, long used to the pattern. Another circumambulation of the shop, which did not take long. One of them opened a caramel sweet from the teashop next door for fortification. “Have you…” she whispered. She had a beauty mark at the edge of her mouth. “That is…”

Her friend huffed out a breath and puffed up her chest as though she was very brave indeed. Her blonde ringlets positively quivered with courage. “Oh, let me. We’ve come for the Nightingale stories.” Her tone was strident, her cheeks red.

“They are great fun. Come with me, if you please.”

They followed Kitty behind a bookcase set parallel to her counter. Behind was a cozy reading room, and the circulating library. Also, books in open trunks that could be locked at a moment’s notice. It was safer for her customers this way. Some of her more risqué books existed in a hazy unknown legality. She did not technically sell them. She left them out and a customer bought a sketch of a gold griffin instead. It was not a perfect system, but it had kept her relatively safe thus far. She had only been questioned once by a constable, and she had blinked at him innocently without a shred of comprehension until his own stammered explanations made him so uncomfortable that he left and never returned.

She’d added three griffins to the ceiling that day.

But Clara’s publishers offered a great deal of bribes to various members of Parliament and the courts to be considered merely “frivolous ladies’ novels.” It had allowed the Nightingale to become extremely popular. One still did not flaunt Ravished by the Rakehell, but it was safe enough to purchase, safe enough to sell or lend through the circulating library. Aside from that, Kitty also carried the widest selection of Minerva Press novels.

Kitty left her customers to peruse and whisper together. It was some time later when one of her regulars floated into the shop. There was no other word for how Lady Winthorpe entered any space—she meandered. She could have been on fire and Kitty was fairly certain she would still meander like a bit of dandelion fluff.

“Good afternoon, Lady Winthorpe,” Kitty greeted her.

“Miss Caldecott, good afternoon to you.” Lady Winthorpe had blue eyes like faded flowers and a disconcertingly direct gaze, plus moon-white hair. And a great love of racy novels. And gossip. “Any news, dear?”

“I’m afraid not.” I almost fell to my death off a roof this morning. My father tried to sell my sister. I stole from the very last man in all of Britain one should steal from, including the king and all of his dukes.

Lady Winthorpe frowned at the sound of other customers invading her little corner. She had brought her own padded stool and insisted on keeping it there so she could peruse comfortably. “How long will they be?”

“Not much longer, I shouldn’t think.” There was no way of knowing with new and nervous customers. “Would you care for some biscuits?”

“I always care for biscuits.” Which was precisely why Kitty always had them on hand—lavender-sprinkled crescents, wafers dipped in chocolate, butter biscuits topped with strawberry meringue. She offered Lady Winthorpe the plate as her footman backed out to wait on the sidewalk. “Thank you, dear. Has that nasty vicar been back?”

“Which one?” Kitty asked drily.

“Oh dear, there is that pack of them, isn’t there?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And the Ladies’ Society Against Any Kind of Amusement Whatsoever.” More usually known as the Ladies’ Society for Moral Standards. She shook her head, looking terribly dismayed. “They must lead very dull lives indeed.”