Her voice shook him from his thoughts, bringing with them a stinging sense of confusion. She did not think his kiss was good enough? Is that what the baggage was telling him? He could not believe his ears. Nor his eyes.
“Not good enough,” he repeated, aware his voice resembled a growl more than anything.
Lady Evangeline Saltisford brought out the worst of him, it seemed.
Before him, she transformed, shoulders going back, defiance radiating from her along with that cool elegance she had. That duke’s daughter boldness.
She held his gaze, keeping him trapped more effectively than a man thrice his size. “I require more instruction, Mr. Winter.”
Milady had returned.
He did not know which urge he ought to obey first—the one to kiss the chill from her mouth or the one to turn her over his knee.
Neither. That was the correct answer to such a troublesome question. To such an impertinent female. To a lady who tested him and tempted him in equal measure. By God, if this nonsense kept up, he was going to have to seek out Dom. Someone else would have to play the guard for milady. Blade could do just as well as Devil. He was the one who had killed to earn his bread until finding Dom and Devil.
“More instruction?” He glowered at her, summoning all the force of his fury, that rage he had kept carefully within himself all these years.
But this slip of a girl scarcely took note. She certainly showed no sign of fear.
“Surely you cannot deem what just transpired adequate.”
There she went again with her duke’s daughter words.
“Seemed fine when you moaned into my mouth, milady,” he told her cruelly. Cuttingly.
Still, she showed no sign of retreating. “Why do you call me that?”
“You’re a lady.”
“You say it with such bitterness,” she said. “You run it together. Never Lady Evangeline. Nor Lady Evie. Always milady, as if you are delivering an insult instead of paying a courtesy.”
Not wrong, the persistent bit of petticoats.
Milady was a reminder to himself of who she was and what he was. If he had not been good enough for the likes of an East End girl like Cora, he sure as hell was not going to dally with the betrothed Lady Evangeline Saltisford. No good could come of it. A bad halfpenny is what this cursed nonsense was.
“You want to learn how to kiss for your nib husband?” he prodded. “Lord Dullerton could not do the job, aye? Too busy kissing his ladybird?”
He regretted the scorn in his words when she paled, recoiling as if she had received a blow. He had been trying to hurt her, to wound her where she would be vulnerable, and he had succeeded. The knowledge did nothing to pacify the bitterness roiling through him.
“His…ladybird?” She frowned prettily.
Despite her agitation, there was nothing he wanted to do more than kiss her until she couldn’t bloody utter a coherent sentence. He stood before a crossroads. He could do the honorable thing and pretend he did not know a single damned detail about Viscount Denton.
But that was not the truth. Part of keeping themselves in Tip Street at The Devil’s Spawn—swimming in coin—was knowing the details about all their patrons. Every detail. All the duns, the vices, the games, the ladies who warmed their beds, the favored spirits, how many times they pissed in a day.
Well, mayhap not that detail. But every other one there was to be had.
The choice was there—the road that would cause Lady Evangeline less pain and allow her to continue on in her ignorance. Or the road that would tell her the truth, painful and dreadful though it was. Gazing into her eyes, he chose the only path he could. The truth.
“The actress, Mrs. Hale,” he elaborated. “His mistress. Lord Dullerton too busy kissing her to see his own betrothed properly kissed?”
He ought to have kept the last to himself, but he was feeling vindictive toward old Dullerton. And covetous. Nibs did not know what they had. That nib in particular. If Devil had a woman like Lady Evangeline to kiss, he would never know another’s lips.
Fuck.
Where had that come from?
“Mrs. Hale, the most celebrated actress in London?”
Celebrated for her prowess treading the boards and in the bedchamber both. Her beauty paled in comparison to lady Evangeline’s. There could be no comparison between the two women. Lady Evangeline was beautiful, fierce, fiery, and surprisingly giving and passionate. She was not at all what he had initially supposed her to be. Mrs. Hale was pretty enough in her way, but she was also a woman who had lived a hard life. Her coldness showed in her eyes, and it was the hard stare of a woman who knew what she had to do to keep flush in coin.
“Aye,” he said. “That one.”
She cleared her throat, looking torn and pale and so unlike herself he wanted to kick himself in his own arse for allowing such rot to fall from his tongue. “She is Lord Denton’s…ladybird?”
“Last I heard.” Guilt lanced him. “Matters change, especially when a lord is expecting to take a wife.”
The last was a blatant falsehood. Lords did not stop seeking cunny elsewhere when they wed. Rather, they grew bolder. The wife was for heirs. The mistress for pleasure. Nothing stopped them from taking what they wanted, however they could have it, unapologetically.
Which was also why Devil and his siblings unapologetically reclaimed the largesse of the quality who frequented their establishments.
“You are telling me Lord Denton has a mistress.”
Lady Evangeline’s voice cut through his thoughts.
He could lie to her. Or he could tell her the truth. He was not certain which of the two would land him in more trouble at the moment.
“If common fame is to be believed, yes,” he responded.
And he knew it was. But he kept that salient bit to himself.
“Mrs. Hale.”
“That is the one, aye.”
Her nostrils flared, her full lips thinning and compressing in a betrayal of her emotions. For a moment, he wondered why the hell they were devoting so much attention to Lord bloody Dullerton. And then he recalled. She intended to marry the blighter.
“Mr. Winter?” She moved toward him, bridging the distance once more, bringing with her that scent he could not seem to resist.
What the hell was any man betrothed to Lady Evangeline Saltisford doing dallying with a woman like Mrs. Hale? One was a good-hearted innocent and the other was a cynical jade. He understood women like Mrs. Hale. They were women like the one who had given him life, who had to earn their living rather than having it provided for them. They were cunning and bold, using anyone they could to better themselves. Women who would sell their own sons to the demons of hell without a qualm if it meant something for them. One less mouth to feed.
“What is your Christian name?”
The gentle question shook him from his thoughts of the past. “Devil.”
Lady Evangeline shook her head. “Your true Christian name. I do not believe anyone would name their child Devil.”
His name hovered on his tongue, and he did not know why. He answered to Devil. Devil was his name. It may not have been the name the woman who had birthed him had given him, but it was the name she had always called him. Later, he had embraced it for different reasons. He was no longer the weak lad she had birthed and abused.
He gave Lady Evangeline a grim smile. “Wrong, milady.”