He is going to kill me . . .
Verity swallowed hard.
“If you’ll excuse us?” Mr. North . . . Lord Maxwell murmured.
Verity took a step toward the door.
“Not you, Miss Lovelace.”
Mr. Bram climbed awkwardly to his feet. “Oi’m so sorry,” he said hoarsely, an apology that went ignored by Mr. North.
Her heart lurched. Every muscle in her body lurched. This was bad. Which would have been the understatement of the century. She curled her toes into the soles of her borrowed slippers and followed the stranger’s—nay, he was no longer a stranger in name—the Earl of Maxwell’s gaze. As dread slowly wound its way through her, Verity curled those digits all the tighter.
And as it was all the easier to focus on matters within her control, she looked to her older patient as he limped across the room. “Be sure and try out those remedies, Mr. Bram.” She felt Mr. North sharpen his gaze on her person. “And I’ve something that might help with that limp, too,” she promised.
The older man stopped. “Do ya, now?”
She may as well have promised him the sun, moon, and stars for the way he looked at her. “Oh, yes. You’ll require—”
“Bram,” Mr. North snapped, and the older man instantly scuttled off, but not before flashing her an apologetic look.
“It is really not Mr. Bram’s fault. He’s not done anything wrong. You really shouldn’t take your . . .”
Not taking his eyes from her person, he reached behind him with an agonizing slowness and drew the door shut. Click. That soft but decisive snap that served as a seal of her fate.
Just like that, Verity’s bravado flagged. She clutched at the fabric of her skirts. Wanting to be the composed reporter gathering her research, and undaunted in the face of peril.
And she came up . . . pathetically empty.
That cold smile affixed to hard lips remained in place, a grin that no person would dare mistake for anything but the feral threat it was. He pushed away from the door and started a languid stroll toward her.
Had she truly been relieved about determining the identity of her savior and captor?
It was now all muddled.
“Now, Miss Lovelace? If that is your name?”
“M-my name?” Wasn’t it? Even her name eluded her in that moment. “Of course it is.” Her voice ended on a croak as he drew ever closer; the ice that frosted his gaze sprang her to the reality now facing her, the menace that spilled from his broad frame. Mayhap she’d been wrong. Because she’d experience with earls—was, in fact, the daughter of one. They were nothing like the predatory devil who stalked her now. “I am Miss Verity Lovelace. What grounds would I have to lie?” She hurried to place the chair of his desk between them as another barrier.
He stopped his pursuit. “And how may I help you?”
Ironically, the stranger—the gentleman—could have uttered no truer words than those.
They fortified her, and sent resolve creeping into her spine as she brought her shoulders back. Verity met his gaze squarely. “Are you the Earl of Maxwell?”
Except she already knew as much . . . she simply sought the confirmation from the gentleman’s mouth.
His eyes grew shuttered, but not before she caught the flash of horror in their depths.
He was a man unaccustomed to being challenged. And his unsettledness eased away further frissons of fear. Verity slid out from behind his desk chair and glided slowly across the room. She stopped when only a handful of steps separated her from the very stranger who’d put a knife to her earlier that night.
“Do I look like an earl?” he countered, belated with that reply—that deliberately evasive one.
Taking that as an invitation to study him, Verity peered at Mr. North.
That slightly hooked nose, which had been broken one or more times, did little to conceal the aquiline appendage that served as a signal of his birthright. The small white nicks and scars merely marred a canvas of otherwise flawless high, chiseled cheeks and a hard, square jawline.
Glorious. Her pulse throbbed a beat harder. His features, melded with those flaws, only served to mark him beautiful in his masculinity.
His mouth crept up in a tight, one-sided smile that didn’t meet pitiless eyes. “Did you have a good look, Miss Lovelace?”
He’d noted her appreciation. Verity’s cheeks burnt, and she curled her toes into the soles of her borrowed slippers. He merely sought to disconcert her. It was a familiar state she’d found herself in many times before, with many men before him. Feigning nonchalance, Verity gave her head a little toss. “You have the look and the tones of an earl,” she pointed out. “And more . . .” She gestured to those private missives she’d availed herself of. “You have letters written regarding Baron Bolingbroke.” Verity stretched up on her tiptoes so she could at least hold his gaze and not be peered down at. “Therefore, Mr. North, I would say you are, in fact, the Earl of Maxwell, after all.”
Chapter 10
THE LONDONER
INVISIBLE
The Earl of Maxwell remains a specter . . . lurking. Hiding. Waiting to show himself to the world. When will he decide it is time? All society—polite and otherwise—holds its collective breath . . . for now.
M. Fairpoint
What a goddamned fool he was.
He, who kept all out, had fallen prey to Verity Lovelace’s indomitable spirit and strength.
And those same damned traits that had made him lower his guard remained on full display even now. The moment he’d caught the hellion snooping in his desk, he’d anticipated a rightful fear from the young woman. Certainly, he’d expected tears. At the very least, pleas for forgiveness as she’d blubbered on useless excuses.
He’d hand it to her. She’d offered none of the likely responses, and unsettled him by going on the offensive, boldly unapologetic.
And damnably accurate in the conclusions she’d reached.
Damn Bram.
Except as soon as that thought was given life, Malcom killed the blame.
Malcom was the one who was responsible for this. He had brought the chit here. He had let her into his rooms. He had only himself to blame.
For all the good that self-acknowledgment did.
Unnerved, Malcom called on every shred of control he’d mastered through the years to keep those sentiments concealed. To give himself something to do, he stepped around her, brushing her shoulder as he passed. Coming close enough to detect the steel that infused her spine.
She stood proudly erect, that imperceptible stiffening a mark of the expected terror. She did not, however, back away.
Malcom made a show of folding the damning page she’d availed herself of. Her eyes followed his every movement as he ran his thumb and forefinger along the crease.
All the while he silently cursed himself for falling lax. Good God, he’d sat down and played chess with her.
He’d been careless, an all-too-unfamiliar misstep on his part. One he hadn’t before made.
Until her.
Malcom made a bid to reclaim his footing. “Tsk, tsk. That was a mistake, Verity.” He didn’t want to notice the long graceful glide of her throat as she swallowed. The lone bead of water from her bath that clung to her still, lingering persistently there, a crystalline drop as stubborn as the woman herself. Malcom placed the note inside his desk, and then brought the lid closed with a quiet snap. “I do not take to having anyone go through my belongings, Miss Lovelace,” he whispered, starting a path around her.
Once again, she didn’t make apologies or excuses. She just lifted her chin another fraction. “You are the Earl of Maxwell.”
His neck went hot. God, she was tenacious, her spirit a confusing mix of breathtaking and infuriating, and blast if he didn’t know what in hell to do with her . . . or more, with his response to her. “I’ve already told you; I’m not the man you think I am.”
Which wasn’t a lie, but rather a deliberate stretch of the truth.
“Actually,” she said with a gentle smile, “you’ve not already told me that. Rather, you’ve called me out for—” Those rosebud lips immediately compressed into a silencing line.
“For?” he purred, stalking a circle around the minx. “Hmm? Going through my possessions?” She remained silent, her gaze suitably wary, following the path he walked about her.
“I wasn’t going through anything.” She scrunched her face up. “Not intentionally anyway. I was searching for a pencil.”
“A pencil,” he repeated flatly.
“Exactly,” she said with an enthusiastic nod that sent drops of water flinging from her wet hair. Dark tresses with a thousand shades of brown to them. “How else was I to write down the remedies for Mr. Bram?”
The remedies? . . . Mr. Bram?
As a boy avoiding street lords determined to make him part of their gang, and escaping the cold, he’d taken to hiding inside various Covent Garden theatres. A number of kindly actresses and actors had taken mercy on him and let him hide above the rafters, high above the stage and the audience, watching from afar. This moment, with Verity Lovelace, felt a good deal like one of the many farces that had played out before him.
Malcom jammed his fingertips hard against his temple. What in God’s name was happening here?
“I understand why you’re angry,” the young woman murmured in soothing tones better fit for a child. “You’re upset I was snooping, and I’d have you not take it out on Mr. Bram.”
Malcom’s self-control broke. “His name is not ‘Mr. Bram,’” he bellowed. The lady jumped several inches off the floor. “His name is Bram. Just ‘Bram.’”
She paled. Her body trembled. She did not, however, back down. “You needn’t be so angry about it, my lord,” she shot back, her breathless timbre ruining whatever courage she otherwise displayed.
My lord.
There it was again.
Malcom sneered. “You’ve made the mistake of confusing me with someone who is safe. And why is that, hmm?” He caught the ends of several dark strands that hung, twisted and tangled, down her back. Twining the curls about his fingers, he held her effectively trapped. “Because you take me for an earl?”
The blood slipped from her cheeks, leaving them an ashen hue. “Release me,” she whispered, resistant through and through.
He didn’t relent. “Because you, like all the world, believe those men are fine and good and no harm can befall you as long as you’re with one of those vaunted lords?” Malcom twisted the lock once more. “You believe the title ‘earl’ affixed to a man’s name somehow erases who he is.” Who I am. Malcom lowered his head until their brows touched and their eyes were aligned. “What he is.” He placed his mouth close to hers; their breath mingled and danced. “Well, if that is the case, you’re about to be disappointed, Verity.”
They remained locked in silence, warring with one another.
Malcom’s gaze dipped to her mouth. To those provocative lips that existed in a perpetual pout and, because of it, flayed his logic. Desire took on a lifelike energy, crackling and hissing like ten thousand embers that burnt in a hearth.
Then she darted the pink tip of her tongue out, hers a siren’s temptation. “Are you the Earl of Maxwell?” she repeated.
“And if I am?” he countered, unable to look away.
“Then I’ve been searching for you.” There was a lilting quality to her words as she spoke, a lyrical singsong, pure and unsullied by the dirt-clogged streets, and it heightened the reminder of all the ways in which this woman, this stranger, was different. And it was because of that maddening pull she had over him that it took a moment for him to hear that admission.
“You’ve been searching for me?” All his defenses went up, swiftly dousing the maddening haze of lust that had clogged his damned senses.
She gave a hesitant nod.
Oh, the bloody fucking irony! He tossed his head back and erupted into a harsh, guttural laugh. He’d stumbled upon one of those bastards seeking him and his story. At numerous points, he could have been on his way and free of her. But not once but twice, he’d gone back to the blasted termagant’s side, and then brought her into his residence.
And at last, the minx edged away from him, displaying a belated but justified fear.
“What do you want?” he asked flatly, unfurling so that he towered over her more diminutive frame.
She backed up another several steps.
Did fear send her retreating? Or the need to look him directly in the eyes? He’d known the minx for barely four hours, and he’d wager the life he’d built as a tosher that it was, in fact, the latter.
“My name is Verity Lovelace,” she began.
“You said as much,” he said icily. “What were you in search of? Handouts?”
She sputtered, “Of course I didn’t come looking for charity. I work for The Londoner.”
“The Londoner,” he echoed, dumbly. Oh, God in the heaven he didn’t believe in.
This time, they are reporters with newspapers . . . And according to the people talking, they’ve begun searching the sewers for you . . .
Impossible. She couldn’t—
“It is a newspaper.”
“I know what The Londoner is, Miss Lovelace,” he snapped. “And I’d hardly call it a newspaper. It’s nothing more than a gossip column.”
By the slight pout of her lips, she took umbrage with his opinion, and yet this time, the damned virago managed to retain control of her usual obstinacy. She cleared her throat. “Although I disagree—”
“You have two minutes.” And then he was tossing her out on her deliciously rounded buttocks.
Verity cleared her throat again. “Yes. As I was saying, I work for The Londoner.”
“What manner of work do you do there?”
The woman bristled. “Do you find it so hard to believe that a woman would have honest employment?”
“A fine one like you?” He flicked a finger at the puffed sleeve of the gown he’d given her. “With your fine speech and lily-white, unblemished skin, I’ve you marked as a lady.”
She swatted at his hand. “First, my garments should not factor into any assessment of me. I’m merely wearing them because you destroyed mine and provided these. Secondly . . .” A pretty blush blossomed on her cheeks. “I’m not a lady.”
“Some fancy lord’s by-blow, then?”
The color flamed several shades of red brighter. “We’re not talking about my past, my lord,” she said between her teeth.
Ah, he’d struck a nerve. Invariably, he discovered his opponent’s vulnerabilities. Verity Lovelace was no different. Not in the ways that mattered. “So that is it, then? Hmm?” And the gaze she leveled this time upon his chest was so direct it ran through Malcom. Sightless, unseeing.
She held her mouth with such tension, white lines formed at the corners of her lips.
“Tell me this, Miss Verity Lovelace,” he whispered. “What makes you think you’ve the right to probe into my life, and yet insist on privacy and secrets for yourself?”
“My life is of no interest,” she said, her voice so hushed he had to lean close to make out what she said. “But yours? Yours is a tale of injustice and wrong and—”
“Do not presume to make your efforts out to be any sort of social crusade,” he hissed, and Miss Lovelace tripped over herself in her haste to move away from him. “What you are in search of is gossip, is it not?”
“No. Yes.” She wetted her lips again.
“Which is it?”
“Both,” she elaborated. “There is, of course, a desire for society to learn about your identity, and additionally, it would do well for the world to see that Polite Society is not so very—”
“Polite?” he taunted.
She gave another one of those nods. “Precisely.”
“I was being sarcastic,” he said coolly. “I take, by your choice of rather predictable words, you aren’t writing for the papers, Verity Lovelace.”
The young
woman folded her arms at her chest; her eyes flashed with indignation. “How dare you?” The affront in her tone and body’s response merely confirmed . . .
Malcom tossed his head back and bellowed a mirthless laugh. “That is it.” And then her name and why it was familiar hit him. “V. Lovelace of The Londoner.” The bloody huckster, peddling in the curious details of Malcom’s life, was no “he” but rather a “she.”
The lady brightened. “You’ve read my work?”
Her work. “Your rubbish column where you speculate about the Lost Earl? Aye.”
She beamed like he’d plucked a damned star from the sky. “The Lost Earl. I, too, felt that had a lovely sound to it.”
He whistled. “Daft.” The lady was daft. “I just called your writing shite.”
Miss Lovelace wagged a finger at him. “Ah, yes, but you have heard of me.”
He’d entered some manner of upside-down universe. There was no other way of accounting for the facts: one, that he’d left a woman alone in his rooms; and two, that when presented with evidence of his fury and outrage, the chit before him responded with nothing more than a too-pleased smile and an insolent lift of those remarkably long digits.
As if to confirm that very truth, the young woman stalked with purposeful steps over to his desk and—
His brows shot up. “What in blazes are you doing?”
Verity froze, with the lid lifted in her fingers. “Uh . . . I require a pen. And you don’t use the designated tray for what it was intended.” Only a man who was deaf would have failed to note the subtle chastisement there . . . and even had the man been deaf, he would have seen with his very eyes the censure in her smile that wasn’t quite a smile. As it was, Verity Lovelace proceeded to fish around the inside of his desk, muttering to herself.
Nay. Not daft.
Mad. The chit was madder than the late King George himself.
“Ah, here.” Sounding entirely too pleased, the termagant withdrew a pencil and then set to work searching for something else. “This will do.”
More than half-dazed, Malcom shook his head. “What in hell are you doing?”
In Bed with the Earl Page 13