Long ago. A faint echo that hummed and buzzed in his mind. A child’s voice . . .
Someone is coming for me . . . Someone is coming . . .
Then, all at once, the present rushed up to meet him. Blinking, Malcom shoved aside the foreign memory. Or imagining. Those weren’t his memories.
“What?” At last, he let go. His feet hit the floor, and Malcom flipped his hair, shaking the excess sweat from those strands.
Giles grabbed a towel from the hook on the wall and tossed it over, and Malcom wiped his face. “Someone has been asking questions about the sewers. Tonight, I saw a pair entering.”
He slowly lowered the damp cloth. “When?” he whispered.
The other man lifted a shoulder in a loose shrug. “Twenty minutes—”
Malcom’s black expletive drowned out the remainder of those words. “And you waited to tell me?” He shoved the tails of his shirt inside his trousers, stalked over to a hook, and yanked free a dark wool jacket.
“Seemed like you had important business to see to,” Giles said dryly.
Sitting on a wood stool, Malcom proceeded to tug on a boot, all the while tamping down another curse. “Is there nothing you don’t find amusement in?” he snapped.
“Is there anything you do?” the other man drawled.
“No,” he said flatly as he pulled on his other boot. There wasn’t time for laughter or amusement in the rookeries. Not as long as one wished to stay living.
“Corner of Charing Cross. Here.” Giles grabbed the seven-foot pole and tossed it to Malcom.
He easily caught it and started out. After Sanders’s visit, he was spoiling for a damned fight. And he intended to have it.
A short while later, Malcom slid the grate off. Using his right arm, he lowered himself through the opening, and then reached up with his free hand to drag the grate into place.
He let himself fall.
The sound of his feet striking the ground was muted by the distant mutterings echoing down the tunnel.
Narrowing his eyes, Malcom did a meticulous sweep, and then started forward. As he walked, he scoured his gaze over tunnels and crevices more familiar than the place he now slept. The commotion that had greeted him had since faded and ushered in a silence broken only by the occasional drip-drip of the sewer water and the desperate squeak of a hungry rat.
Up ahead, the forward path he’d traversed so many times before stood blocked. Malcom slowed his steps, taking in that small heap of stones that had fallen.
Those loose bricks had seen countless men and children dead in these places, discovered long after they’d been pinned or knocked out, their bodies feasted on by the rats so that only bones were left to greet the toshers there to replace them.
And then he heard it . . .
A soft mumbling . . .
And then he saw it . . . No. Not it. The person responsible for the earlier noise, the person who’d been scouring Malcom’s territory.
“Where. Are. You?”
He froze, his entire body stiffening as he unsheathed his dagger.
With Giles’s warning, Malcom had anticipated any manner of people to greet him: a ruthless street tough. A desperate member of some gang, seeking something to assuage his liege.
What he’d not expected in any of his musings on the way here was to find a diminutive girl in skirts, crawling around the sewer floor. Fishing her hand through the murky water. And talking to herself.
“Whereareyou? Whereareyou? Whereareyou?”
Mad.
That explained it. Her words all rolled together, falling over one another.
Even so, those besieged by insanity proved the most precarious, the ones to most closely watch for their unpredictability.
Malcom pointed the tip of the blade at the girl. “Rise,” he commanded in quiet tones that immediately froze her on her hands and knees. “Now,” he ordered when she made no move to comply.
For a moment, he suspected in addition to mad, the girl might be hard of hearing. But then she removed her hands from the water and slowly straightened.
“Palms in the air.” He infused steel into that directive. “Turn.”
The girl hesitated; it was, however, the slight stiffening of her shoulders that indicated two truths about the interloper to his world: one, her hearing was fully intact, and two, she’d a pride that bespoke her stubbornness.
“Now,” he repeated, and as she faced him, Malcom ticked a third item onto his list of discoveries. The girl was, in fact, no girl at all. But rather . . . a woman. Five feet nothing, and generously rounded, she possessed a set of wide hips and a generous bosom that pressed against the dampened fabric of her cloak. With that, he had his fourth piece of discovery. “You’re a whore, then,” he said flatly. Of course. It hadn’t been the first or even the fiftieth time he’d come upon women plying their trade away from the eyes of society—polite or impolite. Here in the tunnels underground, anything went, and it was enough to lure even the finest-born deviants down.
“Wh-what?” she croaked.
Except the only whores who descended to these pits were ones in hiding . . . or ones searching out something . . . or someone. “Who are you meeting?” he demanded, keeping his dagger trained on her.
“Who am I meeting? What manner of question is that?” His head spun as the minx prattled on, asking a slew of questions he couldn’t keep up with. “A meeting? What type of formal meeting do you think occurs down here?”
With that last query and the clipped tonality more similar to his own speech pattern than the usual gritty ones reserved for the coal-roughened Cockneys of the souls who dwelled here, she proved herself different from nearly all in the streets of East London. If she was a whore, she’d have to be a fine one at that.
“I don’t—” Her words ended on a squeak as he stalked over and, tucking the blade between his teeth, swept his hands over her frame, searching her for a weapon. “Wh-what in hell do you think you’re doing?” she stammered, slapping at his fingers.
And Malcom noted a whole sea of new details, ones vastly more interesting and dangerously distracting: the lush curve of her hips. The flare of her waist. Despite himself, despite the fact that she was a stranger and undoubtedly dangerous for it, his fingers reflexively slowed their search, lingering, exploring. Still methodical despite the wave of lust that wound through him, he pressed his hands along the front of her coarse wool.
“You blackguard!” The lady’s sharp gasp split the quiet, followed by the crack of flesh striking flesh as the minx dealt him a shockingly impressive backhand that barely missed knocking his knife loose and whipped Malcom’s head back.
A heavy silence fell, punctuated by the uneven patter of the water’s drip.
Sheathing his weapon, Malcom rubbed at his wounded flesh.
Hell. “You struck me,” he said, disbelief pulling the obvious from his lips. No one had dared put a hand on him in fifteen years. It was a date committed to memory—the near-death beating Malcom had doled out that day to the older, bigger, and stupider fellow.
With the exception of the bright-crimson circles that splotched her cheeks, a common mark of the sewer’s cold, the woman went a sickly shade of white. “I—I did hit you.” He braced for blubbering tears as she begged forgiveness. “In fairness, you c-certainly had it coming.”
God, she was brave. Malcom curved his lips up in a slow, cold smile. Either way, no one struck him. Certainly not a strange slip of a woman invading tunnels that belonged only to him.
“You should not have done that.”
Chapter 5
THE LONDONER
WHO HAS HE BEEN?
What did the Lost Heir turn to in his absence? Thievery? Begging? Worse? Society can only wonder . . . for now . . .
M. Fairpoint
You should not have done that . . .
No truer, more accurate words could have been applied to Verity and her decisions this night.
All of them.
Since Verity had discovere
d her story had been ripped off, there were any number of things she should not have done: climbed into the bowels of London’s underbelly. Unarmed, at that. Waded through filth in search of her sister’s slippers.
“I—I disagree,” she said on a rush; terror brought her voice creeping up an octave, and yet, neither would she be silent in the face of the ominous threat glinting in his golden stare.
Golden, like a feral cat’s.
The thought had no sooner slipped in than he took a slow, predatory step closer.
Her heart thudded, and she backed up. This had been a mistake.
“You . . . what?” he murmured, his voice a shade deeper than a baritone.
Verity’s bare foot caught an uneven cobble. She stumbled and managed to right herself. “I disagree. You deserved a good s-slap.”
Thankfully, those words managed the seemingly impossible.
The stranger stopped his menacing approach. “Did I?” He dusted the tip of his dagger, a blade that glimmered even in these tunnels, along an enormous palm.
She took in that menacing drag of his blade. By God, she’d not let him unsettle her any more than she had been. Verity gave a shaky nod. “Indeed.” Of its own volition, her gaze slid longingly behind the stranger; with wide shoulders and enormous thighs, he stood, a mountain of a man, blocking her path to freedom. She’d never make it past him.
“Indeed,” he echoed, a taunting edge to his voice. A cool, emotionless grin tipped the right corner of his mouth, leading hard lips into a dangerous half smile. As if he’d followed her thoughts and celebrated her fear. “Fancy lady, are you?”
Verity scoffed. “Hardly.” She might have the blood of an earl in her veins, but that blood was tainted by birthright. Either way, this hulking figure hardly cared; he merely mocked, and as such, she met that disdain with the stony expression she’d perfected with the villagers’ children. “My birthright, however, shouldn’t matter. You’ve no right to put your hands on any woman,” she said crisply. And yet, how many times had she witnessed her mother in the village, subjected to that fate because the world had known she was nothing more than the mistress of a nobleman? And how many times had Verity herself encountered a less-than-subtle touch? The only difference was . . . there’d been nothing sexual about this man’s hands on her. There’d been a perfunctory, all-businesslike purpose to it. Even so . . . there’d also been a thrill of danger, a whispered warning echoing through her that said Run.
He touched his middle and index finger to an imagined hat’s brim. “I’ll remember your lesson on propriety when I’m not stalking through a sewer.”
She’d have to be deaf and dumb to fail to hear the jeering edge there. Only through her terror, Verity noted the details that had previously escaped her: the quality of his dark wool trousers and matching cutaway jacket. His cultured tones better suited for an English gentleman. She ran her eyes over the gleaming strands of blond hair drawn back from a clean-shaven face. And there could be only one certainty: this man who taunted her even now was no sewer dweller. “Who are you?” she asked quietly, the question born of a curiosity that came from the work she’d done and loved.
“The Devil.”
That whisper scraped chills down her spine.
He was on her before she could form a proper, useless scream. Covering her mouth, he muted that cry, drowning out a futile plea for help. She’d been a fool to challenge him. Verity bucked and writhed and thrashed. Oh, God. I’m going to die here . . .
Bearlike in size and strength, the man caught her wrists in one hand and brought them above her head. In one fluid move, he spun her around and pinned her palms to the brick wall, anchoring her in place. “Be still,” he commanded like a king.
Terror lapped at her senses, stealing any logical thought beyond the evil he intended with her. Verity increased her struggles. She bit at his callused palm but couldn’t part her lips enough to catch the coarse skin. Blackness tugged at the corners of her vision. And even as unconsciousness was preferable, she could not give in. Because she’d never awaken. She’d die here.
He placed his lips against her ear, and her eyes rolled toward the dank stones overhead.
“I said, be still,” he whispered. Spearmint wafted in the air, conjuring memories of the treats her father had tucked into her palm as a girl when he’d come to visit, that child’s treat contradictory with this brute now at her back.
Ever so slightly, he eased some of the pressure in his hand, allowing her to draw some breath.
“Are you going to be quiet?” The question hadn’t even fully left his mouth before Verity was nodding her head in a jerky shake.
He edged his enormous palm away, and her entire body sagged, but her captor kept her upright as easily as if he played with a child’s doll. Verity gasped, struggling to bring air into her lungs.
“Now,” he said coolly, “you’re not the one asking questions. Are we clear?”
Fighting still for a proper breath, Verity managed nothing more than a nod.
“Now.” He lowered her arms but still kept them wrapped in a manacle-like grip, one with a shocking amount of strength, and yet there was also a gentleness to it that belied any criminal intent. Or was that merely hope and wishful thought on her part? He turned her back so that Verity faced him. “Who are you?”
“V-Verity Lovelace.” Her voice emerged hoarse from fear and the useless fight she’d put up against him. She pressed her eyes briefly closed. All the while trying to put disorderly thoughts to rights. To plan her escape. To answer his questions.
The stranger released her. “Miss Verity Lovelace,” he murmured, bringing her eyes open.
Another gasp burst from her; he had his dagger in hand, casually angled at her chest. Flee. She arched forward, poised for flight.
“Uh-uh.” Her captor had perfected the cheerfully delivered threat. “I’d advise against that.”
He’d end her. She saw the promise of her death reflected in those gold eyes.
“Now, what were you searching for, Miss Verity Lovelace?” Verity had been jeered and mocked the better part of her life for her birthright alone. This stranger before her, however, was the first who’d managed to gibe so perfectly with a single syllable. “Or . . .” He did a sweep of the tunnels. “Is there a husband whom you are here on behalf of?”
“N-no. There’s no husband.”
“A client?”
A client? And then the meaning of his question hit her. “No.” The denial burst from her, that indignation preposterous to her own ears, given that he was a thug of the streets with a clear intent to kill, or at the very least harm, her. Even so . . . “I’m here of my own volition.”
He slid closer; his stealthy steps barely stirred the water around them. “And what were you searching for?”
Not a “what,” but rather a “who.” And yet, less was more. She knew better than to reveal too much about her purpose here. Shivering, she huddled in her soaked cloak. “Sli-slippers,” she whispered.
He angled his head, setting the long knot of hair drawn at his nape to fall over his shoulder.
At the piercing, unasked question, Verity lifted first one foot and then the other. “I’ve lost them. They are my s-sister’s.” Her voice broke. For it was easier in this moment to focus on the idea of returning home with Livvie’s footwear missing than the fact of her current interrogation at the hands of a stranger who oozed lethality.
He was coldly implacable. “And yet, something drove you into the sewers to risk your sister’s slippers.”
It wasn’t a question but rather an observation doled out by a man who was as clever as he was well built. As such, Verity set her mouth. To hell with him. To hell with his questioning. And her patience—with him, and with every man who made it their mission to suck control from her—snapped. “Are you going to kill me?”
His mouth moved, but no words slipped forward, and knowing that she’d knocked him off guard strengthened her. “Cut me with your knife?” Lifting her heavy hem ab
ove the water, she marched forward. “Rape me and leave my body to rot?”
The stranger scraped a disdainful stare up and down her frame, clear in his gaze what he thought of her body. “I don’t rape women,” he said frostily, not disputing the former charges she’d leveled.
And every last bit of gooseflesh upon her body that hadn’t already been on end from the frigid water soaking her through stood.
Her courage flagged, and when she again spoke, she forced a strength she didn’t feel. “What is it to you if I’m in these tunnels?”
“Sewers,” he said flatly.
Yes, she knew where they were.
The stranger touched the tip of his knife to the clasp at her throat; she sucked in a breath, braced for the thrust of that dagger—that didn’t come.
“And it matters. The reason you are here matters very much, Miss Loveless.”
“Lovelace.” It was an inane correction to make, given that she was one wrong utterance away from being stabbed through the heart.
His gaze sharpened on her face, one that searched for insolence? Or was it her secrets he sought? Or mayhap both. And with an intuitiveness born of the need to survive, Verity knew she’d never leave these sewers unless he had the information he sought. “You were correct. I was . . . I am searching. I’m desperate.”
“Your sister,” he ridiculed, as though Verity’s caring about anyone were foolhardy and a folly.
But if Verity drew her last breath alone in this pit of hell, she’d own that her every action, her every decision in life—including this very one now—had been with Livvie in mind. “My sister,” she said quietly, and for the first time since she’d let herself fall the six feet into these tunnels, a calm settled over her. “I’ve lost employment. My apartments will follow. And our survival depends on my being here amongst the toshers.”
His brows lifted slightly in a near imperceptible elevation that could have been a trick of the shadows playing off the darkened walls. “And what do you know of toshers, Miss Lovelace?”
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