In Bed with the Earl

by Caldwell, Christi

  “Walking?”

  Think.

  There had to be something . . .

  Verity rested her forehead against the lead windowpane warmed from the sun.

  “There has to be a way,” she murmured. There always was.

  “I have it,” she whispered.

  “I hope it doesn’t involve that damned tosher,” Bertha muttered, mopping the perspiration from her damp brow. “That one isn’t about to help anyone but himself. Can’t even share the damned sewers. As if he owns them,” she mumbled under her breath.

  And for the first time since she’d quit Malcom’s residence and grappled with the uncertainty of her fate, Verity smiled. “Actually . . . it does have to do with Lord Maxwell.”

  “Mark my word, gel: he isn’t one for you to rely on.”

  No truer words than those had ever been spoken. The help she’d have from Malcom North, the Earl of Maxwell, however, was one she’d herself take. “It involves his residence,” Verity said quietly.

  The other woman shook her head. “I don’t follow you, Verity.”

  Racing over to the valise where her notes and notepads were tucked, she sifted through. Where is it? Where is it?

  “I just organized all that for you,” the other woman lamented.

  Verity continued her search. “Here,” she murmured, drawing forth the list. Rising in a whir of the same black skirts he’d gifted her, she held the page over to her nursemaid.

  “What is this?” the other woman said, briefly scanning the perfunctory list.

  “These are his properties.” Three in total, uninhabited, vacant residences without so much as a servant seeing to their care. One in the heart of London. Her heart raced. Only, for the first time since she’d walked out of his apartments in the rookeries with her head up, it wasn’t panic accounting for the erratic beat. “He has three of them.”

  “I see that. And you be thinking he’s going to give any of them to you?” Bertha eyed her like she’d gone mad.

  And mayhap Verity had because all this didn’t seem like such a very bad idea, after all. “No.” She smiled slowly. “I’m going to take it.”

  The other woman’s eyes slowly widened into circles. “You’re off your head.” She made to hand the sheet over.

  Verity ignored it. “I’m resourceful.”

  Bertha snorted. “Is that what you be calling it? You stealing from a lord?”

  “Is it really stealing, Bertha—”

  “Yes.”

  “If he has no intention of using it?”

  The other woman paused; it was a discernible, pregnant one that indicated Verity’s logic had forced her way past Bertha’s reservations.

  And then—

  Bertha shook her head. “One such as him would happily see you hang.”

  On the heel of that warning came the ruthless words spoken by the gentleman in question . . .

  Ah, yes, but then, I’m not the pitiable one humbling myself before a stranger, abandoning honor and good sense because of a sibling, am I?

  Despite the sticky warmth of the early-summer day, Verity shivered. Nay, there could be no doubting that if he discovered she’d taken anything from him, again, he’d see her destroyed. She rubbed at her arms in a bid to rid them of the chill.

  “You know I’m right about him, too, gel,” Bertha murmured with a canniness that could only come from having bounced her on a knee when Verity had been just a babe. Sighing, her former nursemaid pressed the sheet into Verity’s fingers, forcing her to take those notes about the earl.

  The rub of it was, Verity did know it. However, until she managed to secure new employment, and then a residence, her life and those dependent upon her were in peril. “Our future is already forfeit, Bertha.”

  “You don’t know the meaning of a forfeit life, Verity. You think this is the bottom.” Bertha’s eyes darkened. “But this is not it. This is not even close.”

  “Having no roof over one’s head is as damned close to bottom as one could fall,” she snapped, her voice carrying around the room. Verity looked to her sister’s closed door, and this time when she spoke, she did so in hushed tones. “We’ll be careful.”

  “You expect we’re going to come and go as we please in some fancy end of London? Waltz through the front door without attracting any attention to the fact that we’re commoners invading their fancy world?”

  Verity chewed at an already-ragged nail. No, they could hardly venture through the front doors of some Grosvenor Square property. “We’ll use the servants’ entrance, and we’ll do so when it’s dark. Well after the respectable sorts take their beds.”

  Bertha snorted. “What do you know about their goings-on?”

  Bastard born to an earl, it certainly wasn’t her father and his connections to the peerage that had given her most of her understanding about that world. “You forget,” she reminded the older woman. “My money over the years has been earned by understanding and writing about every detail around the lives of the nobility. I learned when they move about. When they retire for the evening. The hours they socialize. Just like I know the patterns of their servants.” With every counterargument she put forward that silenced the old woman, her confidence in her plan grew. “Until I find work, we’ll simply become shadows to the living.”

  Bertha pursed her mouth. “Ain’t possible to become a shadow if you’re going to have to leave the damned townhouse in search of work during the respectable hours.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she vowed. When the other woman went quiet, Verity moved closer. “What other choice do we have that you see? Where do you expect we’ll go? Use the small amount of funds we do have on renting rooms for a night or two?”

  They remained locked in a silent battle of wills.

  Bertha sighed. “Very well,” she said tersely. “But let it be clear that I find this idea a dangerous one.”

  Entering into the house of a man who’d warned her to never again cross him? Aye, there was nothing safe in that decision, and everything risky. She forced a smile she didn’t feel. “He needn’t ever find out.”

  Except she wasn’t certain whether those assurances were for herself or the other woman.

  Several hours later, when the streets had cleared and the cobblestones were quiet, Verity, Livvie, and Bertha descended from the hired hack in front of the unlikeliest of havens.

  “The person who lives there is going to let us in?” Livvie whispered.

  “Aye.” Even if he didn’t know it.

  Quelling her own awe of the impressive stucco structure, Verity forced herself to close her mouth. She stole a glance about. The longer they remained out on these fancy sidewalks, the more they risked being caught about the streets of Grosvenor Square. There was no doubt that were someone to pass by or glance out their window at the trio with their mismatched luggage, they would summon a constable with rightful suspicions.

  “Come,” she said gruffly, taking one handle of the luggage while Bertha took the other.

  Livvie hurriedly gathered the two valises and set out after them. “Is he a friend of Father’s?”

  “Shh,” Verity and Bertha simultaneously whispered.

  “Is he?” Livvie repeated in more measured tones.

  “No,” Verity said tersely. A friend of Father’s? Pfft. If there’d been such a generous figure, he’d failed the Lovelaces magnificently these past years.

  At last, her inquisitive sister ceased with her questions. When they reached the servants’ door, Verity tried the handle.

  Locked.

  “What did you expect? That it would be left open?” Bertha muttered. “Here.” Reaching past Verity, she slid a stickpin inside the lock.

  Verity rounded her eyes. When in blazes had their nursemaid learned to pick locks?

  “What are you doing?” Livvie asked the other woman. “What is she doing?” she demanded, putting that same question to Verity when the nursemaid remained fixed on the task of breaking them inside.

  Verity touched
a fingertip to her lips and gave a slight shake of her head.

  A moment later, the lock gave with a satisfying click. “There.” Bertha pushed the door panel open and grabbed one end of the trunk.

  When Verity made no attempt to take the other side, she gave her a look.

  Springing into movement, Verity took the opposite handle, and followed the older woman inside. Verity hurriedly closed the door behind them, erasing the miniscule hint of light that had peeked down from the night sky, and replacing it with a shroud of darkness.

  “Can I talk now?” Livvie whispered.

  Could she?

  Could they?

  Bertha glanced around uneasily. “You’re certain he sacked the servants? Didn’t keep on the butler and housekeeper, as is the way of the lords?”

  “Who?” Livvie pressed.

  Giving Bertha a warning look, Verity set down her end of the trunk and moved close to her sister. “Someone I know. A friend.”

  “The gentleman who saved you in the sewers?”

  “Of a sort,” she hedged.

  Several lines of confusion creased Livvie’s brow. “Either it is or isn’t.”

  “Shh.” Verity and Bertha spoke in unison.

  Verity cleared her throat. “You were . . . correct earlier. In your supposition of Lord Maxwell and his kindness.” She grimaced around that last word.

  “Kind, indeed,” Bertha muttered, and Verity shot her another warning look.

  “But you said—”

  “I was wrong. I heeded your advice. I called on him as you suggested.”

  Livvie’s eyebrows touched her hairline.

  And even in the pitch-dark kitchens, Verity caught the romantic glimmer in her sister’s eye, followed by a sigh. There’d be time enough for alarm about that naivete. For now, it served its purpose.

  Except . . . Livvie did a sweep of the rooms. “If he’s allowed us to live here, why are we sneaking in?” Suspicion laced her question.

  Why, indeed? Verity had drafted enough stories over the years that it should come as second nature as breathing to her. Only the work she’d done had never been fiction. She’d given facts and honesties the world had sought . . . to the point of offense in the opinion of many of those nobles who found themselves plastered upon the scandal pages.

  “Well . . .” She felt Bertha’s stare. The one Verity had faced many times as a girl trying to dance herself out of some mischief. Her sister, however, was deserving of the truth. When Verity had been her age, she’d been serving in the role of mother. “Livvie,” she began, “you’re correct. I’ve not been entirely forthcoming.”

  The door between the kitchens and the entrance of the corridors burst open, and two figures exploded through the doorway with seven-foot poles leveled at their trio. Gasping, Verity shoved Bertha and Livvie behind her. “Here, now,” one of the voices boomed. “Wot’s this—”

  That familiar Cockney cut out as an even more familiar pair of men with white hair and thick brows stared back in dumbstruck silence.

  Verity mustered her best smile. “Bram. Fowler. How very good it is to see you both again.”

  Chapter 16

  THE LONDONER

  INHABITED!

  It has come to the attention of Polite Society that the servants previously dismissed by Lord Maxwell have been rehired, which remains nothing short of a curious development!

  M. Fairpoint

  Mayhap the world had accepted the truth: a tosher in the Dials would make no proper husband for any woman—lady or otherwise. Or mayhap it was that the gentlemen had witnessed the crude existence he’d lived, wholly apart from their fine, safe world, and had accepted, even with the title now affixed to his name, that he’d never be a gentleman.

  Or mayhap it was just luck, which Malcom had possessed in spades through the years.

  But the parade of debutantes and their desperate papas had at last ended.

  His limbs straining from the exertion of holding himself aloft, Malcom focused his gaze on the front of the room, shutting out the pain that pulsated in his arms. His life had settled back into a familiar routine. His days were spent preparing physically for his search of the sewers. His nights were spent pillaging them.

  His exchanges with those he called associates were no longer laced with ribbing and amusement at Malcom’s changed circumstances.

  There were no unwanted guests.

  And there was no return of Miss Verity Lovelace.

  That alone should have been cause for victory. The miserable termagant who’d shaken the foundations of his existence and signaled his identity—and whereabouts—to the world was one he would be fortunate to never again cross paths with. Single-minded in her attempt for nothing more than information about him, so that she could sell it to those rubbish pages that for all their meaningful contributions would be better served wiping arses than actually being read.

  And yet . . . he had thought about her.

  Every day since she’d proudly marched out, closing the door not with a bang, but with a damning and decisive soft click that had rung of its finality.

  Of their finality.

  “Good,” he gritted out. Levering himself up another inch, and then carefully shifting his weight, he whipped his body around so that he remained perfectly balanced.

  You don’t know how lucky you are . . . You’re content in this miserable end of London any one of us would sell our souls to climb out of. And all the while you sulk . . .

  And Malcom didn’t want to think of her as she’d been, vulnerable and pleading, desperate for the information only he could provide so that she might help her sister. “If there was even a sister,” he muttered, sweat trickling down his cheek. Because it was no doubt another lie. Self-serving as the summer was insufferable in the Seven Dials, the woman wasn’t capable of anything more.

  Except even as he preferred thinking of Verity Lovelace as only a liar, in her words as she’d spoken them, there’d been such truth not even the greatest London stage actress could feign. That willingness to sell one’s soul, because it was a sentiment he was all too familiar with. In the absolute absence of God, he’d bartered with Satan enough that not even his blackened soul was worth anything to that dark liege.

  Raw in her honesty, her vulnerability reminded him too much of himself as he’d been long ago. So long that he’d forgotten what it had been like to be her: afraid.

  Cursing, Malcom released himself. His feet landed on the floor. Whipping his arms back and forth, he brought blood rushing back to the limbs.

  What was it about Verity that had left him haunted by the memory of her? That he remained unable to shake free of the thought of her? Or the feel of her in his arms?

  And worse, the desire to feel her in his arms once more. To taste her. All the while exploring the voluptuous curves of her hips and buttocks. Desire surged through him.

  KnockKnockKnock.

  That rhythmic pounding at the door broke through his thoughts of her, and that usually unwanted intrusion proved a welcome diversion. Grabbing a towel, he wiped it over his face. “What is it?” he called, the white linen muffling his voice.

  Giles entered, his sack looped over his arm. “North.”

  Treating those close to you as though they are somehow less . . . That is a sad way to go through life, Mr. North . . .

  “It has nothing to do with that,” he snapped.

  Giles puzzled his brow. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Malcom grumbled. How dare she call out the method by which he dealt with his associates. “Giles.” He issued that belated greeting. Malcom looked to the clock. Ten past nine o’clock. The other man’s evening work should be beginning.

  “A greeting and not a ‘What the hell are you doing here’? I say, you’re more cheerful than usual,” Giles drawled. “Though I can certainly venture why . . .”

  “I’d hardly say I’m cheerful,” he muttered. The only cheer he’d allowed himself had been involuntary, and that amusement had been unwitting, a p
roduct of the mouthy minx who’d not hesitated to go toe-to-toe with him. In fact, he’d not even known he could enjoy himself in that way—or in any way.

  “And you haven’t tossed me out on my arse. I’d say that is as cheerful as I recall you in”—he perched himself on the arm of the carved, dark-walnut lounge chair—“ever.” He let his bag fall with a thump. “I trust this has something to do with a certain . . . lady?”

  By God, were his damned cheeks turning red? They felt hot. Only he didn’t blush or give in to any other shows of emotion. “You’d be”—right—“wrong,” he said, toweling the moisture from his arms, and then dropping the cloth. Giving his back to Giles, Malcom proceeded to the washbasin and pitcher and splashed his face. “If this is why you’re interrupting me, you’re in need of more work.” He brushed the water from his eyes, and when he opened them, he caught the entirely too amused expression reflected back in the bevel mirror affixed to the stand.

  “Oh, come, not even the dark-haired, smallish young woman?”

  Malcom dunked his face once more in a bid to dull the heat. Damned Giles and his probing.

  Giles sighed. “You suck the pleasure out of everything, including a good ribbing.”

  “Aye.” The other man spoke an absolute truth. “Is there a problem with your assignment for the evening?”

  Other toshers complained over the tunnel assignments; Giles had only ever accepted the weekly maps he’d been given and never questioned those orders. It was, in short, the reason Malcom had the relationship he did with him.

  “I merely felt, given the news, that it required a visit to congratulate you.”

  The news? That gave Malcom pause, and carefully reaching for a dry cloth, he blotted his face. “Congratulate me on what?”

  The other man blinked slowly. “Why . . . about your news.”

  Warning bells jingled in his mind. “What. News?” When the other man was too slow to answer, he growled, “I asked, what news?”