“And what happens when you want to get out from under this life, Verity?” Bertha asked quietly, and Verity froze with the pronounced brim clenched in her fingers, the bonnet hovering just above her head.
Get out from under this life . . .
The other woman spoke of Verity one day tiring of the arrangement, as though it was a certainty. “It is just a year.” And yet Verity had toiled for eighteen. She’d worked until her fingers had bled, and risen before the roosters. Now she’d be permitted to seek out employment as a reporter without the pressure of each story she penned being all that put food on her table and a roof over their heads. “This is the best I have to hope for,” she finally said, jamming her bonnet on.
“Here,” Bertha muttered, and coming over, she took the long peppermint-striped ribbons and set to tying them. When she’d finished, she adjusted the neat bow under Verity’s chin. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Like your mother.
It whispered in the air, not even needing to be spoken aloud.
“I’m not my mother.” In love at seventeen with a roguish earl, she’d given up all hope of respectability and a secure life. “I’m thirty years old.”
Bertha smiled sadly at her. “Age doesn’t make a woman immune from heartbreak, gel.”
Heartbreak? “Heartbreak. Heartbreak?” she repeated incredulously. “That is your worry, Bertha?” Verity had learned at her mother’s knee the folly in trusting one’s heart to the worst possible person. And there could be no doubting that as merciless, unbending, and dangerous as he was, the Earl of Maxwell was nothing if not the worst possible man a woman might entrust her heart to. “I assure you, I’ve no intention of having my heart broken over or by Malcom North.” Malcom North, who looked at her as if she were the grime in the sewers he traveled nightly. Even as he set her heart racing whenever he was near. Even as she still found herself dreaming of the two moments he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless.
“Aye, and that is the look that tells me I’d be mad to not be afeard for you, Verity.”
At the old woman’s ominous warning, shivers traipsed along her spine. “I’m going to be fine. Better than fine.” She made her lips curve into a smile as she patted her former nursemaid’s hand. “More than a year with nothing to worry after? It is a gift, Bertha. Enjoy it.”
Only, as she gathered up her satchel and started from the room, she could not shake the feeling that those false assurances had been as much for her as for Bertha.
With the nursemaid’s warnings ringing in her head, Verity set out in search of her husband. Since she’d first met Malcom in the sewers, she’d faced his deserved suspicion and anger. Was such a man even capable of the pretense of a doting, madly-in-love spouse? Was she even capable of it?
A pair of maids were hurrying down the hall, and then stopped in their tracks the moment they spied her to dip matching curtsies. “My lady,” they said as one.
Verity glanced about for the “my lady” in question before registering that they spoke to her. It was a foreign state she’d never become accustomed to. And one, for the deal she’d struck with Malcom, she’d be required to. At that reminder of her husband, she cleared her throat. “Do either of you happen to know where I might find Ma . . . my husband?” she amended. Nay, it would never feel right, referring to him in that light.
“’e’s in his office, my lady.” The youngest girl, Billy, tacked a curtsy on to her pronouncement. Girls younger than Livvie, who now had employment once more because Malcom had reflected on his decision to sack them. And one who spoke in street-roughened tones. Malcom had not only rehired back the staff he’d sacked but also given opportunities to a girl who’d been without.
“My lady?” Deborah ventured hesitantly. “Is there anything else you require?”
Verity started. “No. No. Nothing else.” With a word of thanks, Verity wound her way through the halls, down the intricately woven Axminster carpets, the grandeur of the mosaic design so glorious in its detail and beauty, Verity found herself tiptoeing over the pale-pink and yellow floral pattern.
She reached the hall leading to Malcom’s office . . . and then stopped.
How was she going to go through with this? Unlike her mother, who’d managed to smile in front of the earl when her heart had been breaking at the life she’d never have, Verity hadn’t been one to dissemble. She’d been one to speak her mind and reveal precisely how she was feeling.
And then, to have to put on a show with Malcom.
Malcom, who now hated her.
If he’d ever even liked her.
Her heart pulled.
For there had been moments where he’d seemed to like her enough: when he’d scooped her up and dashed through London to keep them both safe. When he’d swindled her in a game of chess.
Except those moments didn’t mean that he cared about her. They’d merely been a window into the fact that he, for all his gruff and hard edges and contrary nature, was, deep down, genuinely an honorable man.
“Something wrong with yar legs now?”
Verity jumped, and spun to face Bram. She found her first smile that day. “Bram,” she greeted. The old tosher limped over, and she hurried the remainder of the way to save him walking the length of the long hall.
“Oi take it ya’re meeting with North?” he asked when she reached his side.
“Aye.” She slid a glance down the wide hall. “That is the plan.” This time, Verity couldn’t even manage a pretend smile. Aye, she was going to be rubbish at this arrangement, after all. “He’s angry with me. With, of course, good reason,” she said quickly. She was well deserving of his rage.
Bram lifted one large shoulder in a shrug. “’e lashes out to keep people out. Ya’re no different from the rest of us. But ’e cares.”
He cares.
Her heart did a funny jump in her chest. “Cares?”
Bram snorted. “About ya.”
That organ in her chest did several more wild somersaults, and then promptly deflated. “He doesn’t care about me. He hates me,” she said softly. When their deal was up, he’d banish her from London just so he didn’t have to share the same streets as her.
“He doesn’t ’ate you. ’e’s angry with ya. He’s angry at all of us.”
And guilt swarmed her. She’d come between Malcom and the small collection of people who mattered to him. “I’m so sorry if you’ve received his anger because of my actions.”
He waved a bearlike palm. “Oi’m the one who gave you shelter. Fowler, too. Would do it again, too.”
“Why?” she asked, unable to hold back the question she’d wanted to ask as to why he’d gone against his loyalty to Malcom and opened the townhouse to Verity and her family.
“Because Malcom brought you to his rooms that night, when he’s never brought any person there before.” It was the first time she’d ever heard anyone in Malcom’s circle use his given name. A teasing glimmer lit his eyes. “And mayhap a little because you cured my eyes, and I’d hoped you could do the same for my leg.” He winked. “Which ya did.”
Laughing softly, Verity nudged him lightly with her shoulder.
And a ruddy blush splotched the old tosher’s cheeks. “And mayhap also because ya didn’t treat me as though Oi or Fowler were monsters just because of how we looked and where we lived. Now ’old yar ’ead up.” Then the levity faded, and he was once more all seriousness. “Ya aren’t right in mostly ’e’s angry at himself because of all this.” He gestured around the opulent corridor with satin wallpaper and gilt frames worth more than every most wonderful item she’d possessed in even her most prosperous days.
Going up on tiptoe, she kissed the old tosher on the cheek. “Thank you.”
He swatted his palm about. “Get on with ya,” he muttered and, not waiting about to see if she heeded his directives, took off quickly down the opposite hall.
Verity watched after him until he’d gone. Perhaps Bram and Fowler were correct. She and Malcom need
n’t be enemies. And more, mayhap they could even become . . . friends.
Friends, when he wouldn’t so much as acknowledge that was precisely what the toshers who lived with him, in fact, were. What if she could make him see . . . ?
Hope filled her chest, and she resumed the same march she had earlier, before Bram’s appearance.
When she reached Malcom’s offices, all her courage deserted her.
“You can do this,” she silently mouthed. Or . . . could she? This role she’d taken on, this agreement, was nothing but work. Of course, it was a different form of work than she’d been accustomed to over the years. Hers had been literary in nature; crafting words and shaping them into something people wished to read was what she knew. What she understood. Putting on a display of a besotted wife was a task better suited to a London stage actress.
Alas, she’d better perform this latest role. If she wished to stay living, and to see those she loved secure.
It was that reminder which gave her the courage to reach for the door handle.
Verity let herself inside. The well-oiled hinges of the door gave silently, and Verity remained unmoving at the entranceway of Malcom’s Grosvenor Square offices. Malcom was there . . . but Malcom as she’d never seen him.
Unlike the past, where he’d been so attuned to her every movement that so much as lifting her slipper had earned his sharpened gaze, now he remained so wholly engrossed in the task before him that he displayed not so much as a hint of awareness that she’d entered.
Four neat piles of ledgers had been stacked high, forming a formidable barrier of those books. Malcom’s head was bent over an opened one as his gaze scoured the pages, the speed with which he ran his eyes over the pages near superhuman in ability.
This side of him, with his guard down, was so unfamiliar. His unfashionably long hair had been drawn back in its familiar queue, and yet a lone strand fell over his brow. Periodically, he swatted at the piece, but remained riveted by whatever information was contained within that ledger. He’d the look of a child with a coveted book in hand, breathless with anticipation of what he’d find on the next pages.
Soft.
It was a word that could never be used to describe or define Malcom North. Or that is what she would have believed . . . before now. Those harsh features, typically set in an unforgiving mask, were devoid of their usual tension. When he worked, he creased his brow; four little lines furrowed there, in a way that made him . . . approachable and real.
And she found herself preferring this side of him. This real, unguarded version of Malcom North.
He stiffened, and it was the moment she knew he’d felt her presence there.
Malcom looked up, and then hurriedly slammed his book closed. “Verity,” he greeted crisply.
Entering, she drew the door closed behind her, and joined him at the desk. She set her satchel down. “Malcom,” she returned, loosening the strings of her bonnet. Suddenly not so very much in a rush to leave this place and seek out their first jaunt as a happily married couple.
“You didn’t knock.”
“Devoted husbands and wives don’t have barriers between them.”
“And you know so much about devoted husbands and wives?” he jeered.
He hated her. Her chest squeezed tight at the palpable loathing that rolled off him. Though in fairness, he hadn’t even really liked her. It didn’t matter what Bram wanted or thought was there. This was real. They’d merely been a pair united by danger in the streets that he’d provided Verity a safe haven from. And you betrayed that by exposing his private life . . .
“I don’t,” she acknowledged, removing her bonnet by its broad brim. She set the woven article down upon her lap. “Not firsthand, that is,” she corrected. “I’ve written of . . . happy”—and unhappy—“spouses.”
“Your gossip column.” Derision continued to drip from his words.
Ignoring that bait, Verity caught the underside of her chair and dragged it closer to his desk. She studied the stacks of leather books lined up. What was he doing? Much like the ledgers that had filled his East London residence, here, too, there were neat stacks. Without thinking, Verity reached for one of them.
“What are you doing?”
Her hand hovered over the stack. “I’m sorry. I was . . .” Her lips pulled, and she shook her head.
Malcom rested his elbows on the edge of his desk and leaned forward. “Let us be clear, madam, as long as you are here—”
“Until the end of next Season.”
“Until the end of next Season.” He clipped out that echo. “You are not to avail yourself of anything unless I allow it. And you’re certainly not to go through my belongings. While we are living together, as long as we are alone, we aren’t going to put up some damned charade of a devoted, loving couple. We act the part when there are people about, but that is it.”
Aye, he hated her, all right. With her newspaper article she had, without any input from the gentleman himself, opened Malcom in ways he hadn’t wished to be before the world. As such, he was entitled to that rage, and she was deserving of that sentiment. Even knowing all that, she still had this urge to cry. Verity drew in a slow breath. “I know you don’t like me.”
He snorted.
“Hate me, even,” she allowed, her heart pulling. How ironic that she’d made the decision she had as a matter of survival, and in the end, she’d earned his antipathy and hadn’t even retained a job for that betrayal. “But servants are the eyes of a household, and if we’re going to live together, with you hating me, no one will ever dare believe that charade. If the world is to believe our marriage was a love match, we have to play the part.”
Malcom steepled long fingers, resting the bridge they formed upon his book, and smiled coldly. “And just what makes you think that ours need be passed off as a love match?”
Verity opened her mouth. No words came out. She tried again. “I . . . just assumed that would be easiest, to explain our hasty union.”
“It doesn’t matter what they believe or don’t believe. Mayhap I wanted an heir. Mayhap I wanted a wife to oversee my properties when I go live my life. Perhaps we’ve had a falling-out.”
Verity was already shaking her head. “The papers have already written of your rescue. They’re going to be looking for signs of fissures. Of deception. They’ll expect it of us.” Certainly with Verity’s origins . . .
“Us?”
Even as she’d built her life off words, the ease with which he wrapped a whole host of hatred and mockery around that one syllable still managed to stun her.
“You were . . . raised on the streets,” she said needlessly. “I . . .” I’m a bastard. Her tongue grew thick in her mouth. It was only a matter of time before her own identity came to light. She’d long ago come to terms with who she was . . . what she was. But that had been different. That had been when she lived on the fringe of Polite Society, dipping her toes into their existence, solely for the purpose of earning a living. This? This would be different.
She was . . . what? This woman who’d deceived him, whom he’d entered into an agreement with, clung to her secrets with a greater tenacity than even Malcom himself.
She didn’t want to share her history. And mayhap that was why he wished to know.
Liar. He’d been as eager for Verity Lovelace’s secrets as she’d been for his. Only his motives had never been driven by anything but a need to know about her.
Which is what grates so much . . . , that voice jeered.
“And what of you, Verity?” Either way, turnabout was fair play.
“Me?” Her shoulders came up in a little shrug that another, less astute person might have taken for nonchalant. “What of me?” She was hedging. Searching for time, and her mind, for answers that would satisfy his curiosity.
Curiosity? He balked. It was more a need to know what there was about the woman he’d entered into a pretend lifelong arrangement with. Malcom brought his arms up and clasped them behind his head. “Y
ou expect me to lay myself out for you, then I should know something of the woman I’m married to.”
She plucked at her skirts. Several moments passed before it became clear—she had no intention of saying anything else on the matter. In fact . . . saying nothing on the matter.
Malcom stood and circled the desk.
There was a mystery to the woman before him. And he yearned to draw forth the hidden details that made Verity Lovelace the woman she was. Malcom stopped behind her chair, and Verity stiffened. Lowering his head, he positioned his mouth close to the shell of her ear. She did not pull away. Her body only curved closer. “How . . . very interesting,” he murmured. “Surely the woman determined to have me spill every part of my life that I’ve no wish to share would at the very least be equally forthright?”
An entrancing blush spilled over her décolletage and climbed to the long, graceful column of her neck. That damnable desire pulsed all the stronger. “It is . . . not at all the same.”
Reaching around the back of her chair, Malcom rested his palms along its arms, and framed her. “Oh?” he whispered, so close that as he spoke, his lips brushed the curve of her ear in a fleeting kiss. One made all the more arousing for its evanescence. “And how is it different, Verity?”
Her breath caught. Or was that his? In this moment, it was all jumbled. “You never expressed a desire to know anything about me, Malcom. For you, my purpose being here, the role I serve . . . is singular. To fool. To deceive.”
It was a fair rebuttal. And not even a day ago, she would have been correct. Some seismic shift, however, had occurred. One born of madness. One that required he know this woman he’d tied himself to in a devil’s deal. He straightened. “Indulge me, then.”
Standing, Verity grabbed her bag and strode around the chair with a strength the fiercest street warrior wouldn’t have as effectively mustered. She stopped so abruptly her satchel was set to swinging at her side. “No.”
In Bed with the Earl Page 23
