She expected an indecent offer. It was the correct supposition any woman born outside the ranks of the nobility would make. And it spurred those earliest questions he’d carried about Verity Lovelace and her past. “Marriage.”
A lone early-summer wind whistling outside was the only sound.
“Marriage?” she echoed dumbly.
“A union between us, Verity. Husband and wife. Earl and countess.”
She backed away from him, and continued retreating until she had the porcelain bath between them. “You’re the one who is mad.”
“Ah, but then, I’m not the one who risked life and limb by passing myself off as nobility, and invaded a Grosvenor Square townhouse,” he gleefully reminded her.
The color leached from her cheeks. And then she bolted. He tensed, prepared for her to bolt past him, making a beeline for the door. Except her flight didn’t take her to the door. Of course it didn’t. Clutching her towel close, she swiped a night wrapper from the vanity and raced across the plush Aubusson carpet. She disappeared behind a French screen. There was a soft flutter of the towel falling, and a rustle of fabric. A moment later, she emerged in a modest white cotton wrapper.
“Good God, what is that?”
She followed his horrified stare. “It is a nightgown and wrapper.”
He snorted. “It’s nothing of the sort.” With a high neckline, heavily adorned with ornate lace and flounced sleeves, the young woman couldn’t be any more covered up than had she been wearing a gown and cloak, and yet, with her toes peeking out, there was something entrancing in the ruffled display of innocence. He’d sooner cut his tongue out than admit as much.
Verity drew the belt at her waist tighter. “Given the circumstances, I trust what I’m wearing doesn’t truly matter.”
“Aside from the fact that you stole it,” he drolly reminded her.
“Er . . . uh . . . yes. Aside from that.”
“You’ve robbed much from me, Verity, and I’d have something in return. It seems a fair price, does it not?”
She wetted her lips. And he waited with bated breath for her to throw Bram and Fowler under the proverbial carriage. Yet she continued to remain steadfast, claiming ownership of her decision. “Marriage,” she repeated as if tasting the sound and feel of that word on her tongue.
And by the paroxysm of revulsion, the minx felt the same way he did about the state. Malcom drew the moment on, taking a savage delight in her horror.
Verity drew a deep breath, and swiftly exhaled her words. “You’ll gift me the story in exchange for marriage.”
“Of a sort.” Malcom wandered over to the vanity the young woman had made her own. “All these comforts you’ve enjoyed. The bedding.” As he spoke, he gestured to the respective items in question. “The bath.” He picked up an enameled looking glass. “The—” His gaze locked on the gold rose at the top of the soft-green, painted piece. A buzzing swarmed in his ears. A tinkling song played, tinny in his head. Malcom twisted the loose rose until it could not be tightened any further. The clever mechanical opened, springing forth a songbird.
Hmm-mmm—hm-mm—Dadadadadad—
You look like a princess.
If I am a princess, you shall be my prince. Now shall we dance, Percy?
Laughter echoed in the halls of his memory, rusty from the cobwebs of time. A child’s high-pitched squeals and the brighter, fulsome, joyous expression belonging to a woman.
The mirror slipped from his grip; the ornate piece fell with a loud clatter and crack as the glass shattered. That tinny, discordant tune continued playing.
Gentle fingers touched his sleeve.
Rasping, Malcom shot a hand out, capturing that wrist, squeezing.
“Malcom.” Verity’s pained whisper shattered the disjointed memory.
Verity.
A woman in the here and now.
Safe, and yet, dangerous for what she’d visited upon him, and what she continued to force upon him. But still far safer than the demons that lurked in his mind.
“Are you all right?” she whispered with such gentleness, he cringed.
Malcom abruptly released her, and his fingers clenched and unclenched into reflexive balls. Her astute gaze that missed nothing went to those shaking digits. He swiftly clasped them behind his back to hide that mark of his vulnerability. “Forgive me,” he said sharply, exhaustion having made a muddle of whatever they’d been discussing. He searched his dulled mind, struggling to bring clarity of thought through the pounding at his temples.
Think. Think.
What was she doing here? What was he doing here?
And then it all came rushing back in a whir, crashing through the noise of jumbled memories. “Because of you, I’m being hunted.”
Her high, noble brow creased. “Hunted by—”
“The peerage. Wastrels who’ve lost all at gaming tables and are in need of a fortune. They’re thrusting their daughters at me.” He lifted his chin in her direction. “All a credit to you, Verity.”
“Oh.” That single syllable emerged sheepish. “And so you wish to marry me so you needn’t deal with a proper wife.”
“It’s all really quite simple, you see. I’ve no wish for”—he tossed his arms wide—“any of this.”
Her eyes took in the expanse of the room.
“I want to live my life unfettered in East London.” Where it was safe and comfortable and a world which he knew. Or the way it had been before his identity had been discovered and his existence thrown off-kilter. “I don’t want to be bothered with title-seeking ladies and their fathers who would whore them out. I don’t want the servants and the fine things.” Malcom let his arms fall to his sides. “I don’t want any of it.”
Verity tugged her already impossibly tightly closed wrapper all the closer. “I’m afraid I do not follow, my—Malcom . . .”
“I wish for a marriage as real as the one you’ve created for us,” he said flatly. “Temporarily. We present ourselves as the Earl and Countess of Maxwell.”
“What?” she squawked, loosing that grip she’d had on her night wrapper, and the fabric gaped slightly.
It took a forcible effort to tear his gaze from that hint of generous flesh exposed. He took a step toward her. “In this arrangement I’m prepared to give you everything you desire . . . and more: your story.” As he was able to tell it. Which was largely not at all.
She gasped. “You’d do that?” Then suspicion immediately darkened her eyes.
“During the course of our arrangement, you’ll have the opportunity to live here with a roof over you and your sister’s head. Full bellies. Fine garments. Security.” He let that last word hang on the air as the gift it was.
He’d presented her with a mutually beneficial relationship that any struggling woman of their ranks would have leapt at.
She hugged her arms to her waist. “And then what happens afterward?” That question revealed Verity Lovelace to be a woman all too familiar with the precariousness of life.
His chest squeezed. Damn her for making him care.
“Why, we go our own ways as any proper lord and lady would. Society would expect nothing less of an earl and countess. My story, when sold, will bring you coin enough to keep you comfortable until you find yourself some other work, somewhere far away from”—me—“London.” Then he wouldn’t have to again think of all the ways in which he’d been played the fool by Verity Lovelace.
Her face fell. “I can’t leave London. All the major newspapers are here.”
Malcom dropped his hip on the back of the sofa. “Then it seems we are at an impasse, because the moment it was discovered the Countess of Maxwell was employed by some ragtag gossip column, questions would swirl. And then research would be conducted into our marriage. Whereas if it is understood you prefer the country, no one will give you”—and more importantly—“or me another thought.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
He tried—and failed—to make something out of that qui
et utterance.
Verity glanced past his shoulder, not meeting his eyes. “Why would you go through all of this?” Her voice faintly quivered.
“I get, simply put, the only thing I desire—my freedom. The ability to return to St. Giles and live there without intrusion.”
Verity didn’t say anything for several moments as she hugged herself in another lonely little embrace. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I suspect regardless of my answer you’d ask it anyway.”
“Why would you want to return to the rookeries? Why would you want to face the threats that go with living there and doing what you do?”
It wasn’t her business. She didn’t deserve any more from him than she’d already taken, and yet for some reason, it was important that she understood. “Why do you write?”
She cocked her head.
Malcom motioned to that worn satchel that she’d stormed his home with weeks earlier. “There are other things you might do in the name of survival. Why choose writing for some newspaper?”
Verity thought for a moment. “It is what I know.”
“Is it what you love or what you know?”
“Both,” she said automatically. “I didn’t always write for The Londoner, but I always wanted to. There is something freeing in the work I do. It’s honest. It challenges me in ways that other, equally honest work wouldn’t.”
“And that is why I’m a tosher. That is why I’ve no interest in a fortune I didn’t build from a family I don’t even remember. I’ve built my existence with my bare hands.” He turned his palms up. “Wading through muck and waste is eternally less glamorous than holding a fancy title, and yet there, I’ve been the master of my destiny.” When there’d been none to save him, he’d saved himself.
Her eyes softened. “I see.”
And he resisted the urge to shift because he saw that truth in her eyes.
Verity brought them back to the proposal at hand. “And my being banished from London. This would be—”
“Forever.” He brought his lips up in a coldly mocking smile. “Given that you’d be trading a prison sentence in Newgate for an assignment in Grosvenor Square, I don’t see there’s much for you to consider.”
She held his gaze. “What of my work?”
“What of it?”
“If I agree to your terms, I’d want to continue writing for The Londoner or any paper that would have my articles.”
Articles that would be about him.
“They wouldn’t all be about you. I would, however, exchange that story for employment, which I’d keep as long as we’re together.”
Regardless of the nightmare she’d made of his life, he admired the young woman’s spunk. Verity Lovelace had to be the only woman in the realm who was looking her future, fortune, and title—albeit a false one—square between the eyes, and only asked after her job. Malcom shrugged. “As long as we’re together, I don’t care what work you do.”
Wordlessly, she wandered over to the spot he’d quit at the vanity. Falling to a knee, she studied the remnants of that enamel mirror. Ever so carefully, she picked up shard after shard, dropping them into a neat little pile. Performing the work of a servant as though she’d been born to the role. And yet her language, the way she carried herself, everything about her, screamed of one who’d been born to an elevated rank.
Who was she . . . Miss Verity Lovelace? Who was she really?
And why do I have the hungering to have those questions about the young woman answered?
She abruptly stopped that distracted cleaning. “How long would our partnership be in effect?”
What in hell would be sufficient to satisfy the ton? “This is your world. What would you advise?”
“It is not my world,” she said automatically. “I merely write of it.”
“A year, then.”
“A year,” she cried out. “But . . .”
“The end of the Season is approaching, and then, come the next Season, there’ll be too many questions if my new wife has suddenly gone missing.”
She chewed at her lower lip. “If I do this, time will be carved out each day when I interview you.” And now she would set terms of her own. “I get my story, Malcom.”
“You get your story.” And he would get back his freedom.
Verity took several jerky steps toward the door. As if to flee. As if to escape. And then she shifted course and headed for the window. Drawing the gold velvet curtain back, she peered out at the street below. That glass panel reflected every troubled plane of her expressive face. Unaware as she was of the vulnerable display that window made of her, she proved, for all his suspicions of her, just how lacking in artifice she, in fact, was. “And . . . will there be other requirements for me?” she murmured, her voice threadbare. “Carnal ones?”
Carnal ones? He repressed the grin pulling at his lips. “No, Verity. I’ll not make love to you”—he layered a deliberate pause into his words—“unless you ask me to.” In which case, he’d happily make love to her. He’d set out to tease, and yet a tantalizing image presented itself: Verity at the center of the enormous bed that was even now turned down. Verity, with her arms outstretched, reaching for him as she parted her legs and moaned his name.
He struggled to maintain an even breath.
“I wouldn’t . . . ask you, that is. To . . . to . . .” Her toes curled into the carpet, scrunching the fabric and leaving little indentations upon it. “To do that,” she finished weakly. “What else would be required of me while we are together?”
“To maintain a proper facade of husband and wife.”
“Presenting ourselves before Polite Society.”
Did she seek clarification or to talk herself into that task? Malcom himself would rather face a firing squad, and by the greyish-white pallor of her skin, this proved one area where they were remarkably the same. “Aye.” This, however, would spare him from any more interested, potential fathers-in-law. “Those details you would be responsible for working out.” He knew few of the secrets Verity Lovelace carried, but he’d wager his own life that she’d gleaned how the ton lived.
Verity dropped her gaze out the window once more.
And as he stood there, he had the niggling feeling that she’d say no. And he didn’t know what in hell he’d do if she did. Because he couldn’t turn her over to the law, even if the termagant had betrayed him and stolen from him. Her spirit didn’t deserve to be crushed in Newgate. “What will it be, Verity?” he asked impatiently.
The young woman faced him. Fear and fury mixed in her eyes in an exquisite blending. Had he really found her ordinary at their first meeting? She was an entrancing specimen of courage and strength. “Very well,” she said quietly. “I’ll agree to your terms, Malcom.”
He schooled his features to keep from revealing his shock. Sweeping his arms wide, he made her a mocking bow. “Then I shall leave you to your own. Until tomorrow morning, wife.”
With that, he took his leave, unable to shake the feeling that the Devil was, in fact, female, and Malcom had unwittingly shaken hands in an agreement that could never end well for him.
Chapter 18
THE LONDON GAZETTE
RECENTLY MARRIED!
With the Lost Earl having wed, Polite Society is left now with questions not only about the gentleman himself but also about the woman he’s taken as his wife . . .
E. Daubin
“You are cracked in the head.”
Aye, sometime between the moment Malcom had left Verity’s rooms and a long, sleepless night, Verity had come to the same conclusion as her childhood nursemaid. Either way, it still couldn’t be spoken aloud. Any of this. “Hush.”
“I won’t,” Bertha said. Roughly turning Verity by the shoulders, she set to work slipping the pearl buttons into their respective hooks. “What have you gone and agreed to?”
“A plan that will save us,” Verity said tightly. Just as she’d been responsible since she was a girl of twelve for the welfare o
f not only a baby sister but also the older nursemaid who’d cared for that sister. And yet, how easy it was for Bertha to call Verity out for the salvation she’d grasped at.
“All you know of the man is that he’s ruthless.”
“I said hush,” Verity whispered, looking pointedly at the doorway. Servants were always underfoot. Such knowledge came from the servants who’d been sources while she’d worked at The Londoner, as well as the short time she’d lived in Malcom’s household. “And he’s not . . . ruthless.” She felt compelled to defend him. Because . . . it was true. He’d saved her before, and offered her security. And he’d vowed not to touch her . . . unless she wished it. And you want him to touch you as he once did before . . . “Not entirely ruthless,” she muttered when Bertha forced her back around to meet her gaze.
“You’d romanticize what he’s done?” Verity may as well have sprouted a second head for the way her former nursemaid eyed her. And using the same charges that Malcom had leveled at her. “He’s threatened you at every turn, and now of a sudden you trust his word. Turn,” she muttered, guiding Verity about once more. She slid the last button into place.
Fully dressed, Verity faced her protective nursemaid. “What other choice do we have?” she demanded, and displeasure tensed the older woman’s mouth. “I’ll tell you the answer to that: none. The answer is none. We’ve no home, no employment, barely any funds. Now we do.”
“For how long?”
“It is for a year.” Verity took Bertha by the arms and lightly squeezed. “A year of us not worrying about where we’ll go or what we’ll eat or wear. Think of it, Bertha.” She spoke in cajoling tones.
“You made a deal with the Devil, gel,” Bertha said, unmoved.
Aye, that was also true. “At least we’ll not perish on the streets or end up in Newgate.” With that reminder, she let her arms fall.
“We wouldn’t have ended up in Newgate if you hadn’t concocted a plan to pass yourself off as some nobleman’s wife.”
Blast Bertha for always being correct. “Regardless of the decisions I should or should not have made, it’s done. He made the offer; I agreed.” Stalking over to the pine double-door armoire, she clasped the heart-shaped handle and whipped it open. The row of bows and bonnets hanging from hooks along the front panel shook. Verity grabbed the first bonnet her fingers touched, an intricately woven article with a distinct brim and a wreath of pale-pink primroses circling the crown.
In Bed with the Earl Page 22
