In Bed with the Earl

by Caldwell, Christi

  All the while, she made herself remain still through that scrutiny.

  Suddenly, her employer stopped. “Where is he?”

  Verity lifted her chin in mutinous defiance. “Why would I freely give you that?” she scoffed. “My last story was already stolen from me. You’ve been wanting to sack me since you took over the operations of The Londoner. As such, if I give you that information, you’ll hand it to one of the men in your employ and allow him to complete the story.”

  For a long moment, she believed he would call her lie out for the falsehood it clearly was.

  But then, desperation made a person do funny things, like trust where one oughtn’t. Verity herself was proof of that. “You have until the end of the week, madam. I want that story not only researched but also written and on my desk by Friday’s time.”

  Elation, swift and palpable, surged through her. “Yes, sir,” she said on a rush, her relief real even if her assurances for Lowery were not.

  Mr. Lowery pulled himself inside the carriage. A moment later, his driver closed the door behind him, and the conveyance leapt forward.

  Verity stood there, her face carved into an expressionless mask, her frame immobile, as the carriage pulled away. Fearing the owner of The Londoner would have his eyes on her even now, searching for the truth of her deception.

  When it disappeared over the horizon of the eerily empty London streets, she let her shoulders sag. “Oh, bloody hell,” she whispered. Giddy with relief, she set her shaking palms atop her knees and leaned over them.

  A week. She’d bought herself one week more of security.

  The reminder of the promise she’d made, the one her future now hung contingent upon, managed to penetrate her relief.

  One more week to find a man who’d no wish to be found. And reveal a story that her employer—and all the world—wanted told.

  A bolt of lightning zigzagged across the afternoon sky, nearly black from the ominous storm threatening. With that, reality came streaming back in as it invariably did.

  Cursing, she ran back inside, fetched her worn brown cloak, bonnet, and leather satchel, and stepped back outside.

  The moment her feet touched the pavement, the skies opened up. A deluge of unrelenting rain poured from the heavens, and in mere moments it had flattened her bonnet and sent water running in rivulets down her face.

  Sputtering around a mouthful of water, Verity raced the short distance back to her apartments. Her boots sank into a large puddle, the grime and cold penetrating the thin, breaking soles. So that when she climbed the stairs of her apartments, every part of her and her garments was sopping.

  Her sister immediately opened the door.

  “I got caught in the rain,” Verity muttered the obvious.

  Her sister took her by the arm and pulled her in. “I see that. You look terrible,” she said.

  “I—I c-can always c-count on you to b-be truthful,” Verity said gently through teeth that chattered. She dropped her bag, and it hit the floor, immediately leaving a small puddle on the hardwood.

  Her sister returned her smile. “Of course you can.” Smiling. Always smiling. Would she still be so if tossed out of their apartments and forced to live on the streets?

  Dread slithered around Verity’s belly. If anything were to happen to her, what would become of her sister? It was something she’d not given thought to—until now. Until she hung on the cusp of being unemployed. In her quest to care for Livvie, she’d left her vulnerable: a woman of seventeen, unable to properly care for herself.

  Livvie’s brow dropped. “What is it?”

  Her sister missed nothing. Verity made a show of wringing out her skirts. “I’m cold,” she lied, because soggy skirts were far easier to speak to a girl about than the possibility that they’d find themselves homeless.

  “Here,” her sister murmured, falling to a knee beside her. She proceeded to help Verity from the too-tight boots that were all but falling apart. “These won’t do you much longer, Verity.” Livvie struggled with the ancient footwear.

  “I kn-know.” There weren’t funds. Certainly not now. Not when their future remained up in the air.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” her sister whispered.

  “Livvie,” Verity gently chided. “You should not . . .” She looked down . . . and her stomach sank. Livvie held the threadbare boot aloft, a small, circular scrap of leather that had once been attached to the sole in her other hand. Closing her eyes, Verity leaned against the door. “Bloody hell.”

  “We’ll fix it,” her sister hurried to reassure her.

  Only they wouldn’t.

  “It’s fine,” Verity said tiredly. There were far greater concerns—at the moment anyway—than her stockinged feet being exposed to the London elements.

  Livvie scoffed and set to work helping Verity out of her other boot. “You can borrow my pair when you go to work.”

  When you go to work . . .

  Verity bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m not worried about my boots.”

  That snagged her astute sister’s notice. She sharpened her gaze on Verity’s face, and then slowly stood. “What is it?”

  She hesitated. “It is nothing.”

  Fire immediately flared to life in Livvie’s eyes. “Don’t you dare do that.”

  “Wh—”

  “Consider withholding truths. We don’t do that. Not in our family.”

  No, they didn’t. Just Verity did. To protect Livvie as best she could.

  “He sacked ya, didn’t he?” Bertha emerged from the kitchens. “Foolish ya were, thinking ya could ever make a serious go at that work. Men’s work it be,” she said with a faint pitying in her eyes and words.

  Verity glared at the older, gap-toothed woman. “Hush, Bertha. That’s not true.”

  The heavyset woman sailed over. “And filling this one’s head with hopes that women aren’t afforded the luxury of.”

  Yes, because the options that the world had for all women existed of two fates: a respectable path of marriage . . . or the path of shame and finding oneself in some man’s bed, as had been the case for Verity’s mother.

  As Bertha set out to school Livvie on the ways of the world, Verity walked in her drenched stockings over to the door and pushed it closed. Then, drawing in a slow breath, she glanced between them. “When we left Epsom, we knew that it would not be easy, and yet we survived.”

  “Because your da set you up with work,” Bertha said with her usual bluntness.

  When Livvie went to speak, Verity put a hand on her sister’s arm, staying her words and ending her inevitable defense. “I’ve not been sacked.” That statement chased away the worry from her sister’s eyes. “I’ve been given another opportunity—”

  Bertha snorted. “To find that bloody duke.”

  “He’s an earl,” Verity muttered, struggling with the clasp at her throat. “But yes. He is the reason.”

  Livvie moved aside Verity’s fingers, and swiftly saw to the task herself. Taking the garment, she draped it over one of the two chairs in their apartments. “You’ve searched for him. You can’t find him. Why can’t you simply make it up?”

  “I cannot make it up, Livvie,” she said gently. She’d dealt before in fabricated truths. Her entire existence on the outskirts of London had been one.

  Bertha thumped the table twice. “The girl is right. You make it up.”

  Verity hugged her arms around her middle. Of course they’d be of a like opinion. But then, desperation compelled people to make any manner of decisions they’d not otherwise make. For them—for herself—she wished to do it. “I cannot,” she said tiredly. Not if she wanted to live with herself in good conscience.

  “’Course you can,” Bertha cried out.

  Livvie tugged Verity by the hand and led her to the small kitchen table, forcing her into a seat. “I don’t see why not,” she said softly. “The gent doesn’t wish to be found. He’s not coming out.”

  “And better off for not finding him, I say. Any
man who prefers living in the sewers to being a fancy duke is madder than the late King George,” Bertha mumbled before quitting the kitchen and heading for her rooms.

  After she’d gone, Livvie waited several moments, then sank to a knee beside Verity. “The people want a story,” she said. “They don’t care about what was real and what is false . . . A story is what sells.”

  “The girl is right.” Bertha’s voice came muffled from the other side of the panel.

  They looked toward the older woman’s room and then back at one another, sharing a smile. It appeared Verity had found the one topic that had managed to unite the pair that so often failed to see eye to eye.

  Verity’s smile was quick to fade. “I’m not fabricating a story.”

  “But—”

  “Please, don’t ask me to do that. For when the lie came to light”—which it invariably would—“we’d be precisely where we are now.” Only with no chance of keeping her post, and a reputation ruined. “I’ll not lie to sell a story.” And certainly not a lie about a person’s past.

  “Lying’s a good deal safer than starving,” her sister said.

  Verity flinched. “I’m going to find him.”

  “And how do you intend to do that?”

  Seated at the table, staring into the lone flame dancing, Verity found she rather didn’t know. But she would find him. There was no other choice. Someone in East London must know of—

  Her lips parted.

  “What is it?” Livvie asked, concern in her voice.

  Ignoring that question, Verity fixed on not what her sister was saying but earlier words uttered by another. Verity froze. After all, known as Garrulous Bertha by all those in their corner of East London, the older woman tended to easily spew words, as she was wont to do. Still . . . Verity jumped up, and with Livvie calling after her, she bolted to Bertha’s rooms. She didn’t bother with a knock.

  When the door exploded open, the woman didn’t even look up from her knitting needles.

  “How did you know that?” Verity demanded.

  Bertha’s gnarled fingers continued darning away. “Huh?”

  Verity sprinted across the room and plucked the needles from her hands. “You said something to the effect of a man who prefers to live in the sewers.” Words that had been too specific.

  Bertha lifted her rounded shoulders in a lazy shrug. “That be the word on the streets.” She reached for her darning needles, but Verity held them out of reach.

  “By whom?” she asked slowly, as if speaking to a child.

  The older woman’s lips formed a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile. “My sweetheart.”

  Her . . .

  Livvie’s giggle sounded from beyond Verity’s shoulder.

  Bertha scowled. “Hush. You think it so shocking that I might have found myself a suitor?”

  The girl’s laughter only deepened.

  Verity gave her sister a look and, when she’d finally silenced her, returned all her focus to Bertha. She fell to a knee beside her fraying upholstered chair, one of the remaining pieces left from the lifetime of comfort they’d enjoyed while the earl had lived. “And . . . who is this gent?”

  “He’s a tosher.”

  What . . . ? Puzzling her brow, Verity glanced over at Livvie, but the younger girl merely stared back with wide eyes.

  “What is a tosher?” Verity pressed Bertha.

  “Pfft. One would think you were two fancy gels.” Instead of the by-blows they were. The implication hung there . . . without inflection, and yet, still stinging as it always had . . . being bastard born—even if it was to an earl. “Tosshher,” she repeated, as if adding an extra syllable and slight emphasis to the word might somehow make it mean something to Verity. “He’s a sewer hunter. Scavenges. Pans and retrieves tosh. Well, more than tosh because ‘tosh’ is copper,” she explained. “This fellow finds himself a whole lot of riches down in that waste-filled water.”

  Livvie’s face pulled. “That is disgusting.”

  “Be that as it may, the fellows doing it are better off than your sister here, trying to write a story for a gossip column.”

  Her mind racing, Verity fell back on her heels. It made sense. All these months she’d been scouring London for anyone with a hint of the gentleman’s identity, she’d been searching the wrong places. Asking the wrong people. In short, the Earl of Maxwell didn’t walk amongst them. Rather, he’d been under her all the while.

  There was a tug at Verity’s sleeve, and she glanced over.

  “What are you thinking?” her sister asked.

  And for the first time since she’d been handed the impossible assignment, Verity smiled. “I’m going toshing.”

  “That isn’t a word,” Bertha corrected, much as she had when instructing Verity as a child.

  Verity’s smile deepened. “It is now.”

  Chapter 3

  THE LONDONER

  THE HUNT!

  All of London is in search of the gentleman whose fortunes have been reversed. He remains a mystery to all . . . There is only one certainty: the Lost Heir has no wish to be found!

  M. Fairpoint

  Verity had done next to everything in order to survive.

  Or so she’d believed.

  The following evening, attired in one of her only three dresses and a pair of too-tight slippers belonging to her sister, Verity realized just how wrong she’d been.

  “Are you having second doubts, gel?” Bertha asked loud enough that her voice carried damningly down Brook’s Mews.

  Nay, more like third and fourth and fifth doubts. “Shh,” Verity said gently.

  “Now you’re so worried about getting yourself caught? We’ve been standing here for the better part of five minutes.”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” she muttered, and then forced herself to kneel. Ignoring the cold of the pavement penetrating her thin skirts. Wishing all the while she’d had Livvie accompany her instead. Knowing this was no place for her sister. Furthermore, Bertha was the one with connections to the toshers, and having two women and a sheltered young woman hovering around the sewer opening would only risk notice. As it was, Bertha, with her failure to appreciate the importance of silence, posed danger enough. Verity wrestled with the grate, her muscles straining under the unexpected weight of the protective covering. At last, the unrelenting cover gave, and she used all her strength heaving it up.

  The stench of rot filled her nostrils, and she gagged, covering her nose in a futile bid to block the smell of it.

  Bertha leaned forward, and then swiftly drew back. “Good God.” She pressed her forearm over her face.

  Nay, there was no God down there.

  “I suspect it is going to get a good deal harder when you’re in there,” the older woman pointed out with her usual blunt honesty.

  And damn if she wasn’t right. Forcing her arm to her side, Verity eyed the opening.

  She could do this.

  How difficult could it be? Climb down—

  And search for a man who didn’t wish to be found? So much so that he’d forsake a title in place of . . . this?

  Verity scrabbled with her lip. Mayhap Bertha was right, after all. Verity was a-hunting a madman. For no sane person could prefer this life to the one awaiting him if he simply claimed his fortune. And for the first time since she’d been handed her assignment from Lowery, unease wound its way through her for altogether different reasons. Not from the sheer desperation to locate and tell the story, but from what would happen if—when?—she did locate the man in question.

  An image slipped in: a beastlike figure, with the stench of filth clinging to him. Wild eyes. A feral mouth.

  I cannot do this . . .

  “Mayhap you don’t go in,” Bertha murmured with her first vocal doubts raised. “Mayhap there is another way to find him.”

  There wasn’t.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” she muttered again. Only, as she remained standing there, she couldn’t determine whether she was tryin
g to convince the other woman she was going to climb down—or herself.

  Either way, before her courage deserted her, Verity shimmied onto her belly until she dangled with half her body in and the other half out of the opening. Then, slowly, she lowered herself down into the sewers.

  She choked on the acrid scent that slapped at her.

  Her arms ached. Her muscles screamed. But for the life of her, she could not let herself make the final descent.

  There has to be another way.

  “There isn’t,” Bertha whispered, confirming she’d spoken aloud. “Only way down into the sewers is through one of them grates,” she murmured, misunderstanding Verity’s wonderings. “Now you should hurry on with yourself. Before someone comes and we don’t have either our lives or your story to show for it.”

  And in the end, it was that ominous warning about either of the fates awaiting her that compelled her. Verity closed her eyes and let go; her stomach dropped along with her in a fall that seemed eternal.

  She landed hard, sinking into a small puddle, the freezing-cold water instantly penetrating the thin soles of the pair of slippers she’d received just that morning. “Bloody hell,” she whispered, her voice pinging off the stone walls.

  Verity climbed her gaze up the six feet between her and that lone exit, and her stomach flipped over once more. How in blazes was she to get back out now? “Bertha,” she whispered. “Bertha,” she repeated, this time more insistently. And for one horrifying moment, she believed she’d been duped, lured, and left to die in this dark pit where none would ever know.

  But then . . .

  Bertha ducked her greying head into the opening. “What?” she cried, her voice ricocheting around the brick walls.

  “Shh,” Verity implored. “It’s fine. It is just . . . I . . . I’ll need help climbing out.”

  Even in the dark, she caught the pull of Bertha’s high forehead. “Help? You only just climbed in.”

  And despite herself, Verity found herself laughing. “Not now. Later.”

  “I’ll wait here—”

  “I’ve told you. You cannot.” Too many would be watching and questions would be asked, and Verity wouldn’t have her story stolen once more. “Go with your fellow . . . Return in thirty minutes.”