In Bed with the Earl

by Caldwell, Christi

“My story wasn’t fabricated.” She spoke with an earnestness etched in every delicate plain of the upturned diamond shape of her face. “Everything I wrote was true, Malcom . . .”

  He scoffed. What rot. Either she sought to butter him up for information or she was a damned romantic without the sense the Lord gave a creeper. “My actions that day were—”

  “Heroic.” Verity turned her palms up. “You saved me. That was the only story I had that day, and that was the story I wrote.”

  His eyes went to the rough skin of her palms, the chipped nails, the ink staining the intersecting creases of her hands. It was the ink. The black mark of her treachery, reminding him that anything spilt from this one’s lips was only about the story she was intent on snagging to sell. “I didn’t give you anything. You took it, Verity.” And he’d give her nothing else. “Now, if you know what is wise, don’t darken my door or path again.”

  The young woman sank her teeth into her full lower lip. “I can’t leave. I’ve no choice. I need this s-story.”

  Malcom remained unmoved by the faint crack in those last two syllables.

  “My sister—”

  “Ah, yes, the sister with the slippers. The same one who convinced you to come to me.”

  Fire flashed in her eyes. “Are you making light of me?”

  “I would have to care enough to make light of you. I don’t.”

  She flinched, and something completely foreign, so foreign it was almost indistinguishable but felt a good deal like . . . guilt . . . slapped at a conscience that proved not as dead as he’d expected—or hoped.

  Verity hugged her arms to her middle, and wandered out from behind him. Making for the front of his offices and the doorway, and more importantly, her long-overdue exit.

  She stopped on the threadbare circular wool rug in the middle of the room, making herself an unwitting bull’s-eye in a target. “I’m employed by The Londoner.”

  Of course he shouldn’t have anticipated she’d leave. “You said as much at our last meeting.”

  “My employment rested on my providing my editor with this story.”

  “My story.” One that he’d few details on himself. Distant whisperings of moments that dwelled in murkiness, that he couldn’t pull from the shadows and had no intention of wading through for this woman—or anyone. His past didn’t matter. All that did was his future. “And I’m supposed to care about your circumstances more than my own?” he snapped.

  She ran saddened eyes over him. “No,” she said quietly. “I suppose not. But I thought it might matter to you that my family’s well-being hinges upon my successfully attaining this . . . your story, Malcom.”

  “It doesn’t,” he said with his usual bluntness. Only . . . why did it feel as though he lied to himself?

  Verity sucked in a juddering breath. Moving her gaze just over his shoulder, as though she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, she then spoke again. “Do you not have people you care about? People whose well-being matter to you?”

  “No,” he said with an ease born out of truth. There’d never been anybody. And there never would be. No good came from one’s dependence on another.

  She briefly shifted her focus to him. “Your Mr. Fowler and Mr. Bram. The black-haired man who was here earlier?”

  He flicked a glance over her. “No one matters to me outside of the business dealings I have with them.”

  “Treating those close to you as though they are somehow less.” A pitying glimmer reflected back in her expressive eyes. “That is a sad way to go through life, Mr. North.”

  “Ah, yes, but then, I’m not the pitiable one humbling myself before a stranger, abandoning honor and good sense because of a sibling, am I?”

  Instead of the rise he’d intended to get out of her, she flashed a sad smile. “I’d still take a life . . . how did you phrase it? Humbled and pitiable? With people I love in it to this cold, empty, emotionless existence you’ve set up for yourself.”

  He’d not set anything up for himself.

  He’d simply lived the life he’d been dealt. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her as much. It was a physical effort to keep back that admission she’d no right to.

  As if she sensed that weakness, she drifted over to him. “What is it that makes you so determined to hold on to your secrets, Malcom? Is it guilt? Fear of acknowledging to the world what you lost?”

  He was upon her in two long strides, catching her lightly by the arms. “I’ve not lost anything, Miss Lovelace,” he hissed. One would have to have memories of something in order for it to be truly gone. “There is nothing more, nothing less. This is my life.”

  “But it’s not,” she cried, pounding a small fist against his chest. “You are an earl.”

  A sound of impatience escaped him. “I don’t want it.” His fingers curled reflexively into the satiny-smooth skin of her arms, and he forced himself to relinquish her. His hands flexed, much like when he’d burnt his hand as a lad, making a fire in a home he’d found for himself one winter. “I don’t want any of it.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” she cried. He made to step around her, but she darted into his path. “You’re content in this miserable end of London any one of us would sell our souls to climb out of. And all the while you sulk.”

  He sputtered, “I do not—”

  “Because of what?” she continued over his indignant interruption. “Because you had the misfortune of being born an earl? Well, forgive me if I don’t feel badly for you, Mal—”

  He covered her mouth with his. It was nothing more than an attempt at quieting the seemingly never-ending tirade prattling past her lips. And yet the same explosive hunger when she was near, in his arms, blazed to life.

  She moaned and caught herself against him, clinging like tenacious ivy.

  Malcom swept his tongue inside, and she met that invasion with a bold lash of her own flesh against his. He groaned as lust pumped through him.

  Working his hands over her generous hips, the equally generous swells of her buttocks, he explored all of her again as he’d longed to in ways that had kept him awake these past weeks. He devoured her mouth, its hint of honey shockingly seductive in its sweetness.

  “I’m not the gentleman you take me for.” He panted against her mouth, and then catching the hem of her gown, he tugged her skirts up and exposed her legs, then sank his fingertips into her hips.

  A keening cry spilled from her lips, and her head fell back.

  Malcom swept down and suckled and bit at the long column of her neck. Working his lips over her, dragging more and more breathless sounds of desire from Verity.

  He caught one of her legs and looped it around his waist; that deliberate angling brought his throbbing shaft against her core. Even through her modest undergarments, the heat of her burnt him. And an embrace that had begun of one purpose took on more powerful, all-consuming overtones that reduced Malcom to the feeling of this woman in his arms. He rocked himself against her.

  Her lips formed a small circle. “Oh!” She breathed a ragged, hungry whisper of discovery, and it enflamed him all the more.

  “Who are you, Verity Lovelace?” he whispered between each slant of his mouth over hers. Her reply was nonexistent beyond the little puffs of her every exhale.

  His hunger for her was mindless, his body’s need for her all-consuming.

  And was the reason he didn’t hear the door open—until it was too late.

  Cursing, he wrenched away from Verity and shoved her behind him. “Bloody hell, Fowler.”

  The old tosher stood in the doorway, making no attempt to hide the amused grin on his lips. “Merely came to see if you wanted me to toss ’er out.” His smile widened. “Oi see that ya don’t.”

  “Get the hell out,” Malcom shouted.

  Fowler was already drawing the panel closed.

  The sound of his laughter carried in the hall, muffled, and then distant, before fading altogether.

  Malcom scraped a hand through
his hair. Bloody hell. It was one thing to have been weak not once, but twice where Verity Lovelace was concerned. It was an altogether different matter to have that weakness on full display before Fowler—or anyone.

  He faced the young woman and found her busily smoothing her skirts. “You’ve quite unconventional servants.”

  Had it not been for the faintest shake to her palms, he’d have believed she was as unaffected as her composed tones suggested.

  “I don’t have servants,” he clipped out.

  Her clever and revealing gaze revealed the interest there. “Then who are they?”

  More information he’d given her. Too much already. And he’d wager that was the very game she’d played when she brought up those names again. With a sneer, he stuck his face in hers. “I haven’t given you enough today to print in your column?” Heat splashed his cheeks. “It is unfortunate for you Fowler entered,” he taunted, determined to at last silence her. “You had me a moment’s away from having my trousers down. Imagine the story you could have written then. Hardly as romantic. A fancy woman rutted against the wall by the Lost H—”

  She slapped him.

  Hard. The ferocity of that blow, combined with the unexpectedness of it, brought his head whipping back and his ears ringing. Malcom flexed his jaw. Well, he’d certainly managed to end her questioning. A new appreciation swelled for the fearless minx.

  “You d-didn’t have to be crude,” she shot back, bold even in her fear. He started over to her. Verity backed away until she ran into the curtains that shielded the streets below, and out of space. “And I’m not a fancy woman,” she went on, holding her palms up when he stopped in front of her. “I’m simply a woman attempting to do her work and care for her family. And you?” She gave him a pitying look. “You are so self-absorbed that you don’t care at all about the plight of anyone. You have properties. Ones that you keep empty. Not caring that you sacked servants who needed work.”

  Malcom scraped his eyes over her, this woman who’d unsettled his world. “No, I don’t. And I’ve told you: I’m not a man who cares.” Or knows. He dropped a hand beside her head, half framing her in his arms. No good could come from speaking with her any more than he already had. No good had come from it, and only problems had faced him since he’d found her in the sewers. “And do you know, Verity? Those fine properties can stay empty until they crumble with time. Now get out.”

  Instead of the last hasty flight she’d made in the dead of night two weeks earlier, Verity slowly straightened. “Very well. I won’t bother you again.”

  “Good—see that you don’t,” he called after her retreating frame. “Oh, and Miss Lovelace?” She paused. “If you cross me again, I’ll ruin you.”

  A faint shudder shook her frame, and despite that fear, she sent her chin tipping defiantly up. “You needn’t worry. I’ll not.” A moment later, Verity Lovelace was gone.

  “The miserable minx.” How dare she enter his world and tell him how he ought to live. Or question the decisions he made. He owed her nothing. He owed no one anything, which was by design.

  Stalking over to the window, Malcom edged his curtains open. He scoured the pavement, and then found her.

  The young woman descended the four steps with all the regal grace of a queen. She drew her shoulders up, and for a moment, he expected her to look back. To challenge him with her gaze, just as she’d defied him at every turn. But she didn’t.

  “Good,” he muttered into the quiet, the sough of his breath fanning the smudged glass panel and blurring the figure below. It’d be a good day when he never saw Verity Lovelace again.

  You’d be lying to yourself if you don’t admit the exhilaration you feel run through you whenever she’s near.

  As if she’d followed those damning silent thoughts, the ones indicating that she knew the unwitting fascination he had with her, the young woman stole that final look back.

  He curled his lips up in a mocking smile and touched a pretend hat brim.

  Even with the stretch of distance between them, he caught the slight wrinkling of her pert nose. She lingered there on the pavement. Here in the rookeries, where innocents were robbed of all and left bearing the scars of that onetime naivete.

  Malcom balled his hands. She was not his problem. She’d come here of her own volition, risked her own foolish life and limb. One such as her, one who took on the care and responsibility of others, only found oneself on the losing end of life. That’d be her fate and not his.

  No one was his problem—as he preferred it.

  You have properties. Ones that you keep empty. Not caring that you sacked servants who needed work . . .

  Aye, as she’d stated, he had properties, but empty ones without servants. A piercing pain shot to Malcom’s temples. An agonized hiss escaped through tightly clenched teeth, and Malcom caught his head in his hands, applying pressure in a bid to dull that stabbing sensation.

  But it was no use. Agony continued washing over him in waves.

  A face flashed behind his eyes. A voice. A pair, conversing. A towering, liveried servant, glancing down at a small boy with his palms upstretched . . . An extra biscuit is yours. Now be on your way, Master P—

  Gasping, Malcom jerked erect as the rest of that memory vanished. Sweat spilled from his brow and burnt his eyes, and he blinked back the sting of discomfort. He forced them open and searched again for the one responsible for the resurrection of demons that may as well have belonged to another.

  Gone.

  Upon the horizon, there wasn’t so much as a trace of Verity Lovelace.

  Malcom scrubbed the sweat from his face. How dare she? How dare she come here and call him out? She knew nothing of it.

  For that matter, he knew nothing of it. Not truly. Not his past. All the memories were murky at best, blank at worst.

  Until now . . . Until that distant echo of another place and another time with figures he couldn’t place, yet innately knew. I was that boy with that servant.

  “Enough,” he croaked, needing to hear his own voice, to hear anything other than the loud buzzing in his ears in order to ground himself firmly in reality and focus on a safer outlet for his rage. The insolent virago who’d dared to enter his residence and call him out.

  Not caring that you sacked servants who needed work . . .

  He didn’t care. He didn’t.

  And yet . . .

  If he didn’t care, then why not allow those people to remain as they’d been, tending an empty household and toiling away at their miserable existences, just as Malcom himself was?

  “Bram,” he thundered.

  The bulky former tosher limped in several moments later. “Aye?”

  Malcom frowned. As long as he’d known the other man, he had been lame. “It’s gotten worse.”

  Scratching at his bald brow, Bram eyed him strangely.

  And mayhap he was strange. The minx with all her accusations and questions had messed with him. “Your leg,” he clarified, clipping those two syllables out.

  “Ah.” Bram brightened, and a wide grin split his heavily scarred face. “But moi eyes are better.” Aye, they were indeed. “The little miss helped. Said she has something that would ’elp with my leg.”

  As the half-besotted tosher prattled on about the virtuous Verity Lovelace, Malcom’s eyelid twitched.

  Bram seemed to register that involuntary tic, for he abruptly stopped midpraise for the minx. “Is there somethin’ ya wanted?” the old tosher put forward hesitantly.

  “No,” he gritted out. “Yes.” What in hell was wrong with him? What madness had the witch inflicted?

  As eager to please as he’d been since Malcom had hired him on, Bram stared expectantly back.

  “Sanders . . . the . . .” Malcom grimaced. “My man-of-affairs.” Because regardless of whether or not he wished it, the man answered to him. “Tell him to hire back the damned servants he’d previously sacked.”

  “And do what with them?”

  “And . . . and .
. . hire them back,” he finished lamely, waving a hand. “Their former posts. Let them have them. If they want them.”

  “Anything else?”

  He shook his head tightly, and Bram turned to go. Only . . . “Aye. Tell Sanders I’m done with his visits.” Malcom had been patient enough, dealing with the transfer of the properties and the details surrounding the Maxwell title. There was nothing left for them to meet on.

  “As you wish.” Bram limped off.

  “Bram.” He stayed the old man at the door. “There is actually one other thing I’ll require of you and Fowler.”

  Sometime later, after he’d gone, Malcom returned to the window and found the area on the pavement where he’d last spied Verity. A painted whore had since taken her place and was in the process of conducting a transaction with a garishly clad dandy. She caught the gentleman’s hand and led him onward to whatever alley served as the place of her work.

  And I’m not a fancy woman . . . I’m simply a woman attempting to do her work and care for her family. And you? You are so self-absorbed that you don’t care at all about the plight of anyone . . .

  I’ll not think of it.

  I’ll not think of her on her own. Verity Lovelace without employment . . . She wasn’t his concern, or his responsibility.

  It was done.

  He’d shut the door on the Maxwell title and the woman named Verity Lovelace.

  Why did that not bring him the satisfaction he expected it should?

  Chapter 15

  THE LONDONER

  Is Lord Maxwell a man . . . or a monster? Conflicting reports have been provided. The world, however, waits to decide for itself the answer to that question . . .

  M. Fairpoint

  “Well?”

  Verity hadn’t even closed the door behind her when that question greeted her.

  Bertha stood in wait, wringing her hands.

  Verity glanced off to the bedroom she shared with her sister.

  “She tried staying awake but fell asleep about an hour past.”

  “Good,” Verity muttered, rubbing at her sore right shoulder.

  “Where’ve you been, gel?”

  “Walking,” Verity said quietly, and balancing herself on one foot, she tugged off first one slipper, and then the next. Letting the pair fall, she wiggled her toes in a bid to bring blood back to the digits, numb from the hours of walking she’d done.