It wasn’t a question, but rather a statement spoken by one who’d been searching and at last had found his quarry. It deepened the warning ringing in Malcom’s head that had pealed since Giles had tracked him down.
“I don’t like company,” Malcom said by way of greeting, pushing the door closed behind him. “And I like even less people asking questions about me.” He layered a warning within that. Coming forward, Malcom shrugged out of his damp jacket. He deliberately tossed it close enough to Steele to soak him with the remnants of the sewer water.
He’d hand it to the other man: he made no outward reaction to the state of Malcom’s dress . . . or to the stench clinging to his garments or the dusty, sad conditions of this East London office. Of course, Steele, even having climbed out of East London and having established a new life for himself, couldn’t truly divest himself of this place.
“Steele,” Malcom said, with mock joviality. “I would offer you a brandy, but alas, I’m afraid in these parts we don’t have such luxuries to hand out.” To underscore that very point, Malcom fished a small flask from his pocket, another token of his time in the sewers. Taking a swig of the harsh whiskey, he wiped a hand over the back of his mouth, and held out the flask in a taunting dare.
Steele lifted a palm in a polite declination.
Malcom’s lips curved in a jeering grin, and he took another deliberate drink, and then tucked his flask into one of the many pockets lining his wool jacket.
The steely-eyed detective took in Malcom’s every movement, lingering briefly on the clever pocketed garment donned by every tosher in London. Garments all different in their texture but similar for the purpose they served.
“There are matters of some import I would speak to you about.” Steele at last let his arms fall to his sides and revealed a thick folder he held in his fingers.
Malcom forced himself to not linger his focus on the folder. To do so would reveal a weakness. Instead, he smiled coolly. “Ah, I’d offer you a seat, but alas, I fear I don’t have one that would suit a fancy swell such as yourself.”
Expressionless, Steele assessed the stack of wood crates lining the floor before collecting a solid egg-transport box. “This will do,” he said, despite Malcom’s disdain. The man didn’t shrink from the discomforts of Malcom’s office the way any other man of the law would and did.
Either way, the detective had overstayed his welcome. Nothing good could come from his being here. “Ah, but you see, I’m not offering you a seat,” Malcom drawled, folding his arms at his chest. “That would suggest you intend to stay some time, and yet, I’ve no interest in entertaining you . . . or anyone.”
“I understand my presence here is no doubt uncomfortable.”
Malcom snorted. “Getting chewed up by sewer rats is uncomfortable. Having you here as unwanted company? An easy annoyance to be dispensed of.” With that, Malcom started for the door.
“Does the Hope Foundling Hospital mean anything to you?” the other man asked, refusing to budge from his spot on the bloodstained floorboards.
“Nothing,” Malcom said automatically. And it didn’t. There were any number of those hellish institutions, those holding places for children who would eventually be turned loose as pickpockets and whores. “Now, if you’ll excuse me?” He clasped the door handle.
“What of the names Sparky and Penge?”
Malcom paused; those names whispered forward. Vaguely familiar . . . and yet . . . not. Feeling the other man’s eyes burning into his nape, Malcom took a path over to the desk he’d made out of an inverted phaeton wheel.
“I don’t know them. I’ve never heard of them or of your hospital.”
“How did you come to be here, Mr. North?”
“The same way as the rest of London’s orphans.” Rotted luck and even more ill fortune. “Alas,” Malcom said icily, “if you’ve come for philosophical discussions, you’re better served returning to the nobs you rub shoulders with now.”
Steele, however, was unrelenting. “Ah, but you are not quite like the rest of London’s orphans, are you?” Malcom didn’t move. “You don’t have the rough Cockney of one from these parts.”
The other man wasn’t going anywhere. It was not, however, the first time Malcom had been mocked or called out for the quality of his speech. He faced Steele once more. “Neither do you,” he pointed out.
“I was rescued and raised as the adopted son of an earl.”
The question came through clearer than if he’d spoken it aloud: How could they account for Malcom’s proper English?
“Is that why you’ve come?” Malcom goaded. “To trade stories with a fellow street urchin similar to yourself?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. If you’re looking to find someone like yourself? You’re going to want to try Mayfair.”
Steele pounced. “And are you familiar with Mayfair?”
Malcom silently cursed himself for revealing too much. The detective was searching for a street thief, then. “The only places I rob, Steele, are the sewers, where anything is free for the taking.” As long as a man was brave enough—or stupid enough—to go claim it.
“I wasn’t suggesting that you were committing theft.”
“Am I familiar with Mayfair? No. Do I take cream in my tea? Don’t drink the stuff. Should we move on to another polite topic? Weather, perhaps? Rain. Enjoying more of it than usual in our sunny old England.”
Giving no outward reaction to that baiting, Steele snapped open the previously ignored folder in his hands. He sifted through several pages and then extended one sheet of parchment across the phaeton wheel. “Is this familiar to you?”
Making no attempt to take the page, Malcom dipped his gaze slightly enough so he could scan the information written there while keeping an eye on the detective.
126 MAYFAIR
LONDON PROPERTIES OF THE EARL OF MAXWELL
“Nothing. Now—”
“And yet, you can read it,” Steele interrupted.
That gave Malcom pause.
The detective returned the sheet to his folder. “You not only speak proper King’s English but also are able to read. Who instructed you?”
“I . . .” And for the first time since Steele had shown up and he’d sought to divest himself of the detective, Malcom faltered. For . . . he didn’t know. Just as he’d never had an explanation of why his speech had come clipped when all the other boys and girls he’d foraged with had those guttural Cockneys.
“You don’t have an answer, do you?” Steele asked quietly, without inflection. “Or an explanation?”
He didn’t. He never had. When the other people he’d dealt with had all been illiterate and near impossible to understand with the thickness of their speech, Malcom had always been different. So different that when he’d been younger, smaller, he’d been beaten and mocked for it: the shite who thought himself royalty. That name, “King,” once had been used to taunt him, but with the passage of time and Malcom’s growth into a formidable street opponent, it had evolved into an acknowledgment of his strength in these parts.
“How about this?” Steele murmured, withdrawing another page, this one a sketched rendering of a fancy townhouse. The artist had captured the white stucco, the gleaming windows, and the gold knockers on the front of the double doors.
Malcom opened his mouth to deny any knowledge of the residence, but froze. Then, almost reflexively, he took the sheet.
His gaze locked on the minutest detail—the door knocker that didn’t know if it wished to be man or lion, and had somehow perfectly melded the two into a bewhiskered half beast.
. . . the doors scare me, Papa . . . it looks like a man-lion . . .
The page slipped from Malcom’s fingers.
The blood rushed to his ears, and he whipped his head up, the moment shattered. “I don’t recognize that door.”
“I didn’t ask if you recognized the door, Mr. North.” Steele gave him a long, slightly sad smile. “But rather . . . th
e residence.”
A fancy Mayfair townhouse? He and his sort didn’t venture out to those parts of London. Not if they sought to preserve their necks as long as possible. Malcom scoffed. “And why would I know anything about a townhouse in West London?”
“I was hired to investigate the possible whereabouts of a series of children who were taken.”
“If you think I can help, you’re wasting your time,” he said tightly, clasping his hands behind his head. “I don’t deal with anyone.” As a rule, he kept people—all people—at arm’s length.
“Yes, well.” Steele cleared his throat. “The child who lived in this residence,” he went on as if Malcom’s insistence meant nothing, “fell ill alongside his parents. The parents perished. The child was turned over to a foundling hospital.”
“I haven’t been in a foundling hospital.” Not since . . . He shoved back thoughts of that night. Those memories were, at best, murky. “Why don’t you say what it is that you’ve come to say?” He had a sewer to rob.
Absolute silence filled the room, quiet so heavy that Malcom could hear only the periodic drip of water clinging to his trousers.
The detective held his gaze with an uncomfortable directness. “Because, Mr. North, I have reason to believe, and proof along with it, that you lived there . . . only”—Steele glanced around—“under different circumstances,” he murmured when he returned his focus to Malcom. “Back when you were a boy, and the son of the late Earl of Maxwell.”
Chapter 2
THE LONDONER
SCANDAL!
The Rightful Heir, the Earl of Maxwell, kidnapped as a boy by his grasping relatives and turned over to a foundling hospital. One can only wonder at the strife endured by that then young member of the peerage . . .
M. Fairpoint
Over the years much had been taken from Verity Lovelace: the comfortable cottage she’d grown up in. Her collection of ribbons. All her frocks and satin slippers.
But this loss . . . this was the keenest, unlike any Verity had suffered before. This was the first time she’d been robbed of her written words.
Motionless, unbreathing, incapable of moving, she stood in the middle of her room, the paper her sister held facing her.
How am I not shaking?
Or was she? It was all jumbled in that moment. Confused by the words hovering before her. Time stretched on. Verity tried to breathe. She tried to tell herself to get a proper breath. Inhale. Exhale. The simplest of a body’s functions. And she could not do it. The air remained lodged, painful in her chest.
“They’re not . . . all of your words,” Livvie murmured with a startling optimism that life had not yet managed to quash in the seventeen-year-old. “I’ve read it.”
Some of the words or all of them . . . it wasn’t the amount that mattered. They’d been taken from her, and along with them the coin earned from the articles she wrote. The monies Verity relied upon to feed herself, her younger sister, and Bertha, their nursemaid turned all-purpose servant. As such, Verity’s security—their collective security—was threatened.
But it was about more than money . . .
“The title is different,” Livvie murmured.
Verity briefly closed her eyes.
“Too trusting, you’ve always been.”
“Hush, Bertha,” Livvie chided, just then sounding more like a woman ten years her senior. “Ignore her,” she said softly. “You’re not. She’s not, you know.”
And yet, the former nursemaid’s opinion meant next to nothing, compared with what this moment represented.
Bertha snorted. “Don’t know any such thing,” she countered, blunt as the London day was dreary. “As fanciful and hopeful as your mother.”
Their mother had been the daughter of a Scottish tavern keeper, and because of that, she’d the misfortune of crossing paths—and falling in love—with a roguish nobleman who never did right by her.
And yet, the irony of their nursemaid’s words was that Verity had prided herself on being nothing like the woman who’d given her life. Not because she hadn’t loved her mother. She had. But neither was she desiring to repeat the same mistakes that hopeless romantic had made.
In this, however, Verity had been hopeful.
About her future.
Nay, not just about her future . . . but being in full control of it. For her and Bertha, and more importantly, for Livvie.
Her sister cleared her throat. “Would you like me to read the article to you?” she murmured.
I’ll read it. She wanted to get that assurance out. And failed. Verity yanked the pages from her sister’s fingers. She forced herself to read the whole of the words printed there, paragraphs assembled under a story that belonged to her, but with credit given to another.
THE RIGHTFUL HEIR RESTORED
At last, the world has a name. Questions have swirled, cloaking society in the same fog that rolls over the darkened streets inhabited by the man whose identity everyone longs to know.
She couldn’t make it any farther in the article. Her stomach churned, a pit forming in her belly. Livvie hadn’t been completely incorrect; they weren’t all Verity’s words inked on the pages of The Londoner. Only the important ones belonged to her. There were a handful of empty descriptions, extraneous ones that advanced nothing in the article, ones that cheapened her original draft, ones belonging to another.
Not her.
I’m going to be ill . . . “Bloody rotter.” That exclamation tore from a place deep inside, where rage dwelled. Verity tossed the pages, and they fluttered through the air, caught by her quick-handed sister.
“You gave him access?” Bertha pressed.
“I didn’t.” Her fists clenched and unclenched. “He stole it.”
None other than Mitchell Fairpoint.
Verity began to pace. She should have been properly suspicious the moment he’d ceded the assignment over to her. With the paper struggling, as many were, only the most successful reporters found themselves maintaining their assignments. As such, the competition to retain one’s post had been fought out amongst the articles written and the readership drawn in.
Her stride grew more frantic; her dark skirts whipped about her ankles, that whoosh of fabric grating.
For years she’d been fighting for her place at The Londoner, taking on the most menial roles. Finally rising to the ranks of a reporter. Reporting on tedious affairs that only the world of Polite Society could or would ever care about . . . until this. Until this story . . . still about a nobleman. But the first story of substance. The story the world craved. The story that was to have saved her . . . and her family. Gotten them out of their small apartments in the most dangerous part of London.
She had broken the story, only to have it ripped from her.
All the energy went out of her, and Verity abruptly stopped midstride, and then slid onto the edge of her usual kitchen chair.
Gone. It was gone. Except—
“It can’t be gone,” she whispered.
“It is,” Bertha muttered, earning a frown from Livvie. “They’ve been looking for a reason to sack you, and now they have it.”
Aye, Bertha spoke the truth. Verity’s throat moved spasmodically. She’d been hired on as a mere girl of twelve, that post one her father had helped coordinate for her before he passed. And in her time there, Verity had worked within every capacity possible at The Londoner: she’d swept the floors and seen to the overall tidying of the establishment. Before being promoted to the role of note-taker, and then eventually . . . reporter.
All while the owner’s son, that miserable bastard she’d despised since they’d first met, had expressed nothing more than boredom and disdain for his family’s work.
Now that same clueless-to-the-workings-of-a-newspaper blighter had taken over ownership from his aging father, and she’d been fighting for her livelihood since.
For no other reason than her gender.
He didn’t care about the fact that she’d spent nearly half he
r life working in this damned office. Or about the quality of her work.
Her passion.
He would simply turn her out and allow a thief of words in Verity’s place instead.
“Over my dead body,” she gritted out. Exploding to her feet, Verity sprinted over to the coatrack and yanked off her cloak.
“This isn’t the time to speak to him,” Livvie said, correctly anticipating Verity’s intention and exuding far more restraint than her older sister.
“The hell it isn’t.” Verity snatched her bonnet and jammed it atop her head.
As if to make a mockery of that very idea, a bolt of lightning streaked across the afternoon sky.
“I have to agree with the girl,” Bertha warned as Verity yanked the strings of her bonnet into a sloppy bow.
“I’ll return shortly,” she said, grabbing up the morning edition of The Londoner and her small satchel.
She flew from their apartments. The scents of the bakery below, the smells of baked goods and fresh bread that penetrated the thin walls and had always been soothing, now proved sickeningly sweet.
Verity stormed down the narrow stairway so quickly she stumbled at the bottom step. She caught the railing to keep herself upright. When her feet found the floor, she took off running for the doorway that led out to the crowded streets of East London.
The streets were bustling and noisy, with shopkeepers hurriedly hawking the remainder of whatever goods they had for that day before the rain broke.
Bypassing an old Rom woman trying to sell her jewels, Verity raced onward. She kept her gaze forward and wove amongst the passersby, her skirts whipping in angry time to her furious footfalls. As she found her way along the familiar path she’d traveled these past eighteen years, her chest rose and fell from her exertions. From the burn of her fury.
The offices of The Londoner drew into focus. She staggered to a stop, her gaze leveled on the neat little building, the one spot of white amongst a row of grey and brown stucco establishments.
In Bed with the Earl Page 3