On perfect cue, a drop slipped down the rim of the clear glass, and landed on his knuckle.
Malcom cursed.
Leaning forward, she spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “I told you.” She winked, and then tugging free the monogrammed kerchief from his jacket pocket, she proceeded to wipe off the melted ice.
With her head bent to that task, Malcom stared on, unable to look away from her . . . or the task she completed. When was the last time anyone had ever undertaken such a small but tender gesture where he was concerned? For that matter, when was the first time? Had there been a first time? People knew better than to approach him, let alone touch him. There’d been whores he’d bedded, but their every action had been purposeful, driven by sex and devoid of tenderness.
“There,” Verity said, and with a pleased little nod, she turned over his kerchief.
Reflexively, Malcom accepted back that scrap of cloth, and his gaze went to the gold letters embroidered upon the fabric. He ran the callused pad of his thumb over the TP EARL OF M emblazoned there.
Initials that belonged to another. The man who’d served in the role of earl for these past years. A man he’d never met, but who’d profited from Malcom’s absence these past years. And according to Steele, the loss of parents that Malcom had no recollection of. Unbidden, his gaze drifted over the heads of those nosy biddies to the front facade of 7–8 Berkeley Square.
“You remembered Gunter’s.”
“Hmm?” It took a moment for that question to penetrate that all-too-familiar haze.
Only it hadn’t been a question. Verity stared back with a solemnness to her eyes that revealed too much of her thoughts.
“Aye,” he said gruffly.
“Did you . . . come as a child?”
Several drops of orange ice splashed the top of his hand, the moisture cool. He stared blankly down at them, more coward than he’d ever credited before this, because he couldn’t meet Verity’s eyes. “I don’t know.”
There it was . . . the truth. At best what had come before his time as an orphaned child on the streets of East London were murky shadows, buried in darkness. At worst, there was an emptiness.
Had she pressed him, he would have kept silent. He would have cursed her for asking, and mayhap the young woman knew that. Mayhap the same lady who’d demonstrated an eerie intuitiveness to what he was thinking and feeling had gathered as much. “My recollections are few.” That allowance came grudgingly to his own ears.
Verity didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then slowly, she brought her parasol closed. “Whenever my father visited, he always came with ribbons and these little flat chocolate discs, covered in nonpareils.” She held her thumb and index finger in a tiny circle, demonstrating the size of that small treat. “After my mum died, he was forced to move us to a small apartment in London. He still visited. I never saw him smile much again after she died, but he’d visit,” she tacked on as if it were important that Malcom know that much about the shameful man who’d sired her. As if she sought to defend him.
He struggled to follow through her unexpected shift in discourse and telling him about her family.
“The good thing about being in London was we were close enough that he could frequently visit, but far enough to keep us out of the eyes of Polite Society. I always wondered, how did he travel with chocolates without them melting? But they didn’t.” A wistful smile danced on her lips. “I digress . . . just before Papa came to visit, he’d send a note alerting us, because he knew one of my favorite things in all the world was to wait at the bottom step and then race to greet his carriage. It was my favorite part of the day.” Her smile dimmed, and with it stole all the light. “Even when I was determined to hate him for having a legitimate family whom he needn’t keep secret, rushing to meet him was one of my most beloved times, because when he was with us, I could pretend we were his real family.” Her gaze grew as distant as her hushed, lyrical voice. It was the moment Malcom knew she’d lost herself in her telling and forgotten his presence.
Against all better judgment, against all control, he hung on, riveted to this, the widest window she’d let open on the questions he had of her own existence. That world she described, of a solitary girl, awaiting a beloved papa. Isolated even as it had been, it was far more than Malcom had ever known, and because of that, as fictional as the books he’d filched as a child from unsuspecting patrons outside Hatchards.
“One day,” Verity carried on, her voice murmurous, “I received the missive, and I went out to meet him.” Her expression darkened. “Only he didn’t come. He wasn’t there . . .” The long column of her throat moved up and down several times. “There was another. A man.” Verity shook her head and returned to the moment—and to Malcom. “Apparently, he was my father’s man-of-affairs. He’d come to inform us of my father’s passing.” She rested her callused, ink-stained fingers on his knee, and lifted her gaze up to meet his. “The thing of it is, Malcom . . . from that moment on, for so long I couldn’t remember anything of that day: not the weather, not what I was wearing. Not what he said. And all the memories I carried of my father were lost. Occasionally, I would hear echoes of my own sobs. Or . . .” She creased her brow. “I thought they were my tears. It was as if they belonged to another. I couldn’t make anything clear of the happiest memories that had come before it. I couldn’t bring them into focus. Because it was just too h-hard.” Her voice broke, and she immediately made a clearing sound with her throat. His chest constricted with an all-too-foreign pain . . . pain for another. For her. “Perhaps, Malcom, it is easier not remembering than fully owning the pain of that moment.” There was a heartbeat’s pause. “For me,” she added softly. The meaning of her telling was unmistakable: he didn’t remember because the memories were too dark. Too painful.
“And yet you speak of them now,” he noted quietly, without recrimination and rather with a desperate need to know—to know about her and her past. To understand why his mind failed him. “How?”
“One day, when I was returning from my work, the skies opened and it began to rain . . . and a memory slipped in of my father and mother and I twirling in circles in a storm.” Her gaze grew distant, and he knew the moment she lived within that memory. “And we were laughing and just so happy, and I realized I wanted to remember, Malcom. I wanted all the other happy remembrances I could have and every other in between.” She held his gaze. “Even the ones that brought with them great sadness, too.”
Malcom sat there with her words.
And then the truth slammed into him. He had fought to suppress those earliest parts of his life, and he’d done so because if he owned his past, fully, in every dark, evil context, then what would he be left with? What, other than lowered defenses that left him weak to all . . . this woman included?
That’s what she would have of him. That is what she would have him do. He directed his stare at the front of Gunter’s. Honest enough to admit that he was a coward and couldn’t face her square on.
She rested her fingertips on his sleeve. His muscles jumped under that tender, unexpected touch.
He forced his gaze away from that palm that, even with the swath of fabric as a barrier between them, burnt.
“I understand you resent me.” Nay, he didn’t resent her. Not truly. He resented all this. Being thrust into a life he didn’t want. He regretted that was what had brought them—and kept them—together. “But our agreement will have us together for . . . some time. And as such, I’d like to broker a truce.”
Verity held out a gloveless palm.
He stared at it for a moment. “What is that?” he asked flatly.
“Well,” she said slowly in those governess tones, as he’d come to think of them. “It is a handshake.”
“A handshake?”
“During the medieval times, men would conceal weapons in their hands, and so shaking another person’s hand conveyed that no harm was intended, and that is what I would convey to . . .”
Her voice faded
out of focus, as something vague stirred in the chambers of his mind. Another echo, this one in a gentleman’s voice.
“I know that story,” he said hoarsely, cutting into Verity’s telling.
And that is how the handshake has come to be, my boy . . .
Verity lowered her palm to her side.
Dark pinpricks flecked his vision.
She didn’t ask how. And he needed to hear her voice. He needed her to anchor him to this moment, and pull him back from the memories that wouldn’t come.
And then it came tumbling from her lips, her quietly spoken question, the mooring he needed. “Who?”
“My father. It was my father . . .” Only, that admission didn’t suck him into the abyss, trapping him with thoughts of who he’d been . . . before. Rather, there came with that acknowledgment an unexpected buoyancy as the blackness tugging at his vision receded. Malcom drew a breath in slowly through his teeth, filling his lungs with it.
In that moment . . . he felt . . . free . . .
Chapter 20
THE LONDON GAZETTE
The Earl and Countess of Maxwell were recently seen at Hyde Park. Despite the whispers and rumors of marital strife, witnesses maintain that the recently married couple appeared very much in love . . .
E. Daubin
For nearly twenty years, Verity’s life had been her work at The Londoner. For three of them, she had been a reporter. Her nights had been spent outlining stories, and then drafting interview questions for the subjects of her article.
She began with a mock title. An outline. And then came the questions she’d piece together that would fill in the details of the story that would ultimately be printed.
As such, she should be considering questions to ask and record for her upcoming meeting with Malcom.
Instead, her notebook lay open before her, blank.
Since their quiet but not tense return to Grosvenor Square, she’d been unable to think of anything but him and the last utterances to leave his lips.
My father. It was my father . . .
It had represented a deeply personal admission that, once coaxed into further details, would likely have been sufficient enough to garner her work with any newspaper office. But in the immediacy of that moment, and even now, it wasn’t her story or future employment she thought of.
She thought of him. Who Malcom had fleetingly been before he’d been forced to become someone else. The darkness he’d endured. And just as importantly, the point she’d never contemplated before now: What happiness had he known? The only son of an earl, he’d have been cherished for his role as heir.
And yet, he’d memories of Gunter’s ices. And tales of handshakes. Information that had been imparted to him, that echoed in his mind still, all these years later.
And you’d ask him to expose those most intimate parts of himself to slake the hunger of gossips who don’t truly care about the man Malcom North.
What alternative do you have, however?
Is his quest for privacy more precious than Livvie’s and Bertha’s survival?
Verity bit down hard on the end of her pencil, her teeth depressing the soft wood, leaving indentations upon it.
Footsteps sounded in the hall.
The pencil slipped from her mouth, and heart hammering, Verity jumped up. He was h—
Her sister slipped inside.
“Oh.” Of course it wasn’t Malcom. He’d mastered silence with a skill not even the dead of night could manage.
Livvie hovered at the entrance. “Is it all right if I join you?”
Forcing the cheerful smile she’d always donned for her only sister, even when Verity’s heart had been breaking and the world weighing down on her shoulders, Verity stooped to gather her pencil. “You can always join me.”
Leaving the door hanging ajar, with her hands tucked behind her back, Livvie walked hesitantly over. “What are you doing?” she asked as she climbed onto the leather button sofa alongside Verity.
Mindful of those recorded words about Malcom, Verity hurriedly closed her journal. “They’re notes.” She settled for vagueness.
“You’re . . . working?” Her sister had the tones of one puzzling through a complex riddle.
“And why shouldn’t I?” she countered.
“Because . . . you’re a countess. And married . . .”
Leaning over, Verity gave a tug of her sister’s plait. “And who says that a woman who is married should not be able to work?”
Livvie’s brow pulled. “I . . . suppose I’ve never considered it, either way. I just expected that ladies didn’t have to work.”
“Aye, but I’m choosing to work. That is altogether different.”
Her sister drew her knees to her chest, and eyed Verity’s makeshift workstation. “Are you happy?”
Both that abrupt shift and the unexpectedness of that query from her innocent sister tied Verity’s tongue. “What?” Yes. The answer she’d been expected to deliver was yes.
“Happy,” Livvie repeated. “With the earl. With . . . your marriage.”
No. “Yes,” she lied. It had always been easy to lie to her sister. In doing so, she’d protected Livvie from numerous hurts and pain she didn’t deserve. Only . . . in lying to her, have you truly helped Livvie?
In her bid to care for her family, Verity had made herself beholden to so many. Just as her mother had been beholden to the earl. And what good has come from that? a voice needled at the back of her mind. Setting aside her notepad, Verity drew her knees up and faced her sister. “Why do you ask?” she gently urged.
Without hesitation, Livvie brought her hands out from behind her back, and Verity’s gaze went to the cover of that newspaper. “Oh,” she said dumbly.
“It’s written in here. Horrible things. Ones that suggest you’ve somehow trapped Lord Maxwell into marriage, and that he’s desperately miserable, and”—Livvie lowered her voice into a hushed whisper—“if I’m to be honest, Verity? The earl does not seem at all happy when he is with you. At all. He seems angry and . . . not loving.”
Well, given Malcom was angry, Livvie’s observation couldn’t have been more astute.
Sighing, Verity slipped the heavily creased newspaper from her sister’s fingers, and unfolded it. She paused. “The Londoner?”
“I know, I know,” her sister mumbled. “I simply wanted to see how they fared without your articles, and they’re not. In fact, the only reason they’re still surviving is because of the stories they’re writing about you.”
“They’re just that, Livvie. Stories meant to sell newspapers,” she said with a finality meant to end the discussion. And not long ago, that would have been sufficient to stymie the flow of questions and have Livvie continue on to bed. Livvie, however, was no longer the accepting child she’d been.
“But if it is untrue, then how come you and His Lordship are never together?”
Proud as Verity was of her sister’s tenacity and insight, how much easier it would have been had she still been the small babe she’d raised like her own child. “We are, Livvie. Why, we were just at Gunter’s this morn.”
Again, that mention of the sweet shop was intended as a child’s distraction, which her sister didn’t take. “You’ve not taken any meals together. You’re always in one room, working, and he’s in another, doing whatever he does.”
Verity’s mind raced with some response that would satisfy Livvie’s fervent questioning. In the end, she was saved from formulating a response by the unlikeliest of saviors.
She felt him before she heard him, his presence a palpable, thrumming energy in the quiet of the library.
Livvie forgotten, she glanced to the doorway, and every thought faded into nothingness.
Malcom.
Attired in black as he was wont to do, with his long blond strands drawn into a neat queue, he was a breathtaking blend of sophisticated lord and strikingly masculine self-made man who answered to none. He was breathtakingly beautiful in a way no person had a right to be
.
When no greeting was forthcoming, he stepped forward. “Good evening. Forgive me for interrupting.” One would never know he was a man who’d spent nearly the whole of his life on the streets, or that he despised one of the occupants of the room.
In the end, Livvie proved the greater hostess of their pair. She hopped up, and sank into an impressively competent curtsy. “My lord. We were just discussing you.”
Oh, bloody hell.
Unleashing a string of black curses in her head, Verity shot a foot out, catching the back of her sister’s knee.
Livvie jumped. “Ow.” She shot a glare over her shoulder. “You kicked me.”
Oh, double bloody hell. Verity gave her head the tiniest of shakes, praying her sister noted that unspoken plea for silence, and that she also honored it. Alas, God continued to prove himself an elusive figure in her life.
“We were talking about him.”
Oh, Lord. Heat blazed across Verity’s cheeks. “We weren’t,” she said tightly in her best, no-nonsense, bigger-sister tones.
“Uh, yes, we were. I was mentioning that you and Lord Maxwell are rarely together, and you said—oomph. Now, that is really quite enough,” Livvie huffed and, drawing her leg back, hopped up and down as she awkwardly reached behind to rub the offended area.
His face set in its usual somber mask, Malcom glanced back and forth between Verity and her sister. Just like that, Livvie managed what Verity had taken to be the impossible: she earned an honest, even smile from Malcom. One that crinkled the corners of his eyes and dimpled his left cheek. Verity’s breath quickened.
And she didn’t know whether to be wholly bewitched or mortified.
Malcom’s smile deepened, doing even stranger things to her heart. He knew very well the traitorous thoughts running in her head.
The blighter.
Of course he should choose this as the time he would be smiling, delighting in Verity’s misery.
No further invitation was required. Malcom came forward, his attention squarely on Livvie. “And just what did your sister have to say?” he asked as he stopped before them, shameless in his questioning.
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