And then the door was opened. Suddenly, by an ancient butler with white hair. “May I help you?”
But for his flawless English, the man might as well have been Fowler or Bram. A servant who, by his advanced years, should have retired some time ago but remained. For what reasons? A lack of pension? Loyalty? Surely it was not the latter. Not given Bolingbroke’s family history. That brought Malcom back to the task at hand, the whole reason for his visit. “Bolingbroke.”
The servant hesitated. “I’m afraid His Lordship is—”
Malcom shot an elbow up before the door could be closed in his face. “He’ll see me.” Or Malcom would tear down the bloody door with his damned hands, and then hunt the other man for the fiend he was.
“I said, he’s not receiving,” the butler said with an impressive resolve, and this time the old servant slid the door forward.
By God, he wouldn’t. He shot a hand up—
“Florence, is there a problem?”
In the end, it wasn’t a stone-cold Baron Bolingbroke who cut through the butler’s resolve but a slender young lady with a mass of black curls and an even greater amount of curiosity brimming in her eyes.
“Just someone who’s arrived without a meeting, my lady. And His Lordship is not taking visitors.”
The young lady stayed the butler with a hand, and then crooked her fingers, motioning Malcom to enter. “I am the Baroness Bolingbroke,” she said softly, confirming her identity. “My husband is otherwise engaged at this hour. Might I be of any assistance in the interim?”
As he’d been visited by Sanders, and given the permission and then directives to make Bolingbroke pay and then pay even more in interest, Malcom hadn’t thought of the wife. Or the sisters.
And yet even as there was a shred of humanity within him still that regretted in this moment that this woman found herself an unwitting player upon a chessboard designed long ago by different players, there was another woman who mattered far more than her. Another woman who mattered more than anyone else. And Malcom would sell his soul ten times over to protect her from harm. “My name is . . .” She stared patiently back. “I am the Earl of Maxwell.” And he didn’t break with that admission of his rightful title.
She went absolutely still . . . and then that earlier veneer of warmth was doused by a blanket of ice. “I see, my lord. My husband isn’t accepting—”
“I’m not leaving until I see him.”
The young woman hesitated, and he felt the desperate look the butler shot her way. And the battle she fought with herself.
“Very well,” she said stiffly. “If you’ll follow me?” And whipping about, she started down the hall.
As Malcom fell into step alongside her, the butler followed their strides. And then the moment they disappeared around the next corridor, loyal footmen followed in the shadows. Malcom felt them there, too. Lurking in loyal wait.
Aye, but wasn’t that the way . . .
No one saw themselves or their people as the monsters. It’s always the other who’s in the wrong.
“I’ve oft wondered if you’d call, my lord.” The lady kept her eyes trained forward as she walked at a brisk clip his longer legs easily kept stride with. “Or whether you were content to lurk in the wings, waiting like a bogeyman, delighting in the power you wielded.”
How ironic that she should speak of his influence. “How unfortunate . . .”
The young woman fought a futile battle with herself. “What is?” she snapped.
Malcom flashed a cool smile. “That six months of your husband’s past twenty years has proven so unpleasant. For him.” When the reverse had held true for Malcom’s own existence. When Malcom had been beaten and robbed, and stabbed and spit on.
The young lady missed a step, her gaze stricken.
Aye, so the young lady was clever enough to hear that unspoken gibe.
She didn’t say another word the remainder of their long march through the sparse townhouse. Where Malcom’s inherited properties dripped wealth and extravagance, Bolingbroke’s new homes reflected the sorry state of his affairs.
Lady Bolingbroke slowed her step, and planting her hands on her hips, she lifted her gaze to his. “You don’t know my husband. You only know”—what I endured—“what was done to you.” She entreated him with her eyes. “But those actions, they were never Tristan’s. He was a boy at the time those wrongs were committed. And you were both victims.” She grimaced. “Albeit in . . . very different ways,” she finished lamely, at least sounding properly sheepish with that ludicrous charge that Malcom and Bolingbroke had ever been alike in their sufferings. The baroness ventured forward.
“Hullo, love, I thought you were never going to join me.”
Malcom followed that booming greeting across the ballroom . . . and found him.
His foe.
Or . . . his cousin. Odd, he’d never thought of the other man in that light. The distant relative whose parents had sought to off Malcom and had succeeded in erasing him from the world.
Malcom had to remind himself the proper pattern to breathe: In and out. Easy. Measured cadence.
“Tristan,” the young lady greeted, hurrying across marble flooring haphazardly covered in paint-covered sheets. Worktables littered the room with sculptures and clumps of stones set out.
What in God’s name . . .
Malcom took it all in.
Either the man was mad or . . . Nay, there was nothing for it. The man was mad. He hurled blue and green paints at a wall already sloppy with color.
“You’re late, love.”
“Tristan!”
This time, that insistence penetrated the baron’s levity. He turned . . . and stopped.
“You’ve company,” his wife said as she reached his side. “Lord Maxwell.”
Missing a jacket as he was, the baron’s lawn shirt did little to conceal the other man’s muscles as they coiled. He, too, was a man braced for battle.
Aye, mayhap there was blood shared between them, after all.
“I want a word, Bolingbroke,” he called from the middle of the room, content with the distance between them and the booming of his voice off the soaring walls. “Alone.”
Except . . . the baroness slid her hand into her husband’s, her meaning clear. And then Malcom noted with some shock the baron weaving his fingers through the young lady’s. “Whatever you can say, you can say in front of my wife,” he said with a calm Malcom no longer felt.
He remained locked on those joined hands.
And had he not been fixed as he was, so closely attending that silent gesture of support, he’d have failed to note the slight rhythmic pulse as the lady squeezed Bolingbroke’s palm. Just as Verity had done not even eight hours earlier.
And for the first time since he’d stepped foot inside Bolingbroke’s residence, Malcom found himself the one knocked off-balance. He struggled to regain his footing. “Are you intending to hide behind your wife?” Because there’d be no secrets this day. There’d been secrets enough for two decades.
“I have nothing to hide,” the other man replied, his voice quieter, and yet, it still carried. And contained within was a conviction from a man who believed the words he spoke.
“You threatened my wife.” How easily that descriptor slipped out. How right it felt. Because Verity, she was so much more to him. I want her to be so much more . . . Staggered by that realization as it hit him square in the chest in the presence of his greatest enemy, it took a moment to heed the long beats of silence.
“I beg your pardon,” the baron sputtered.
Releasing his hand, his wife took a step forward. “How dare you? My husband is a man of honor. He would never dare threaten or harm anyone, let alone a woman.”
“And yet, he’s the son of a couple who’d steal a child and everything that child owned.”
The baroness blazed to life with a stunning, if incoherent, defense of her husband.
“Poppy,” the other man said quietly, lightly tugging her ar
m. He repeated it again more forcefully, and penetrated her outrage.
A look passed between them, an intimate glance belonging to two people who required no words in one another’s presence.
I’ve felt that with Verity . . . I know that with her . . . I want that with her . . .
Lady Bolingbroke shook her head.
Her husband nodded.
She gave another shake.
And after she gave him a prolonged look, her shoulders sagged. Brushing a hand through those curls that hung loose down the lady’s back, the baron leaned down and whispered something. And then placing a kiss against her temple, Bolingbroke stepped away.
“You’re not wrong, Maxwell,” the baron said solemnly as he abandoned the previously staked-out corner of the ballroom. This most unlikeliest of places for a showdown. But then, this paint-splattering, endearment-calling gentleman was also the unlikeliest of opponents. “My family wronged you. My parents . . .” The baron averted his face. But not before Malcom caught the fury, shame, and rage that crumpled the other man’s features. When he looked back, he was a man once more in control. “I will not diminish in any way what was done. My parents committed the greatest of evils upon you. And no apology will suffice. Anything would be inadequate.” He stopped several feet from Malcom.
The two men sized one another up.
Enemies who’d come together at last in a long-overdue battle.
“Still, all I can do is convey how sorry I am. If I could undo it, all of it, I would. Not because I give a damn about the scandal or the loss of funds.” Bolingbroke spoke with an ease that could come only from a place of forthrightness. “But because of what was done to you. I do not profess to be a good man. I’m not.” The baron ignored his wife’s protestations at his back. “I’ve gone to battle and killed men. I lived a meaningless existence upon my return from war . . . when you”—he took a step closer toward Malcom—“you were the one who should have known those luxuries.”
And yet, would Malcom have ever met Verity? Would their paths have ever crossed?
Mayhap that was what fate had intended all along . . . Mayhap fate had known that Malcom North, as Percival Northrop, the Earl of Maxwell, would have never crossed paths with the courageous newspaper reporter who’d captured his heart . . .
“I’ve hurt many. But I’ve never hurt a woman, and never would. And I’d never let myself, for any reason, visit suffering upon you for what you’ve known.”
It is an act . . . It is a show . . .
It had to be.
Because what was the alternative? That the man he’d spent these past months secretly resenting and gleefully knocking down, was, in fact, a man who’d himself been dragged into this mire, much as Malcom himself had?
Just as Verity had said.
Husband and wife exchanged a look.
Aye, because something was expected of Malcom here.
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 . . .
That was why she’d handed out that lesson, and in doing so invoked that reminder . . . She’d known Malcom would need that gesture.
As Malcom stretched a hand out and placed his palm in the baron’s, he was not besieged by shame or any sense of weakness, but rather an inherent right.
It was done.
And it was because of her . . . Verity.
Verity Lovelace . . . a woman who’d come to mean more to him than anyone. A woman he wanted in his life . . . forever.
He stiffened. A woman who’d come to harm at the hands of someone . . . someone who’d not been Bolingbroke. Ice tripped along his spine. For if the baron was not responsible for the attack on Verity, that meant there was some unknown foe who sought to hurt her.
At six o’clock in the morning, Verity came awake to find Malcom leaving the townhouse. Even as she’d hurried through her ablutions in a bid to catch him, knowing what he intended, she’d proven too late.
And thirty minutes later . . . her life fell apart.
Although, in fairness, it wasn’t really her life. This was all pretend. A game of make-believe.
So why, if it was pretend, was she coming apart inside? Why couldn’t she breathe?
Once more, it had all fallen apart because of a newspaper.
When Fairpoint had stolen her words, Verity had imagined there could be no greater affront she could suffer. The rage and indignation had been so staggering that surely nothing could have surpassed it.
How wrong she’d been . . .
“Ahem. Is there anything else you need . . . my lady?” The young maid who’d delivered the newspaper didn’t meet Verity’s eyes. Though in fairness, motionless in the middle of the gold parlor, Verity hadn’t managed to wrench her eyes away from the words inked across the center page in bold, damning letters.
THE LONDONER
SCANDAL . . . AGAIN . . . !
A great ruse has been perpetuated, and Polite Society made to look the fool. Should anyone expect anything else from one raised in the sewers, even if he was born an earl? The Earl of Maxwell, who would live life in the rookeries, would also lie so easily about having a wife . . .
His pretend wife is none other than Verity Lovelace, the bastard-born daughter of the late Earl of Wakefield.
Verity tried to breathe. She desperately tried to suck air into her lungs.
In the end, she failed.
Verity’s legs gave out from under her, and she sank onto her knees in the middle of the parlor.
“Verity!” Livvie’s voice came muffled from the doorway.
Livvie, who, capable of words and sound, proved braver than Verity, who couldn’t sort through the chaos in her mind.
And then there was a stampede of unwanted interlopers.
Bertha hovered at the front of the room, uncertain, while people swarmed around Verity, Malcom’s servants circling, and she was like that fish she and her father had pulled from the lake and she’d kept in a bowl in his absence, to remember him by. She and Bertha and Mama would peer down, and he’d look up, and God help her. Verity shook. It was too much.
“Get out!” Livvie shouted, and as quick as the cluster of maids had come, they left, filing from the room. The moment they’d gone, Livvie fell to the floor beside her and rescued the newspaper. “Who would do this?” she whispered. “Who could have done this?” As she frantically shook those damning pages, she looked hopelessly between Verity and Bertha.
Dimly, Verity noted Bertha lingering at the doorway. Her cheeks splotched red. The old woman stood on the fringe when she’d only ever been in the heart of the family.
Verity froze.
And just like that, she knew.
Oh, God. No.
Vomit churned in her belly.
She didn’t know. Because it would mean that the woman she’d known, the woman she’d trusted and seen as family, all along had been just another person capable of great treachery and deceit. Which was impossible.
And yet . . . not.
Verity managed to push herself to standing. “Livvie, will you leave me and Bertha alone a moment,” she said quietly. How was she so calm? How, when she was breaking apart inside? Nay, when she’d already broken apart? She held a quaking hand out, and Livvie looked at it a long moment before relinquishing The Londoner.
The minute she’d gone, Verity spoke. “How could you do this?”
“I’ll make no apologies for what I’ve done. I’d do it again.”
Verity jerked. The other woman didn’t even deny it. “You’ve hated him from the start.” Not once had the closed-minded nursemaid taken the chance to see who and what Malcom truly was: One who gave of himself. One who lifted up those who most needed support.
“Aye, I have. He’s a selfish, greedy devil.” Bertha’s voice crept up a fraction. “He didn’t need those tunnels. He’d a damned earldom waiting for him. A bloody fortune. But was it enough?” She jumped in, not al
lowing Verity a word edgewise. “No, it wasn’t.”
Something tickled the back of her memory. A conversation traipsed in, in drips and drabs.
Hush. You think it so shocking that I might have found myself a suitor? . . . He’s a tosher. He’s a sewer hunter. Scavenges. Pans and retrieves tosh . . .
Verity’s eyes flew open. “Your sweetheart . . . ,” she whispered. “That was how you knew Malcom’s identity.” And all along, Verity hadn’t truly given thought to how the older woman had attained the information she had. Even the idea of a “sweetheart” had been secondary. All she’d been focused on was locating her “story.”
“You want to know the manner of man you’ve gone and fallen in love with?” Bertha asked, startling her out of her musings.
“I already know precisely the manner of man he is,” she said quietly. And this spiteful, bitter woman before her was the last who’d ever truly know Malcom North.
“Staked his claim on the entire sewers and threatened my Alders. Your earl had him blubbering himself.”
A sound of disgust escaped her, and Bertha slammed a fist against her open palm. “We were going to have it all: You would get that damned story you were so determined to tell. Alders would replace that bastard in the tunnels.” The glint in her eyes lent her a half-mad look. “And in the end, neither of us got what we deserved. Because of him.”
Verity’s stomach continued to churn, and she forcibly swallowed back the bile elicited by the other woman’s poison. She clutched the curved back of the nearest sofa, keeping herself steady, keeping upright. “You ruined his name. You ruined my name,” she cried. The woman who’d held her and cradled her and been a mentor to her through the years had thought nothing of humiliating her and Malcom before the world.
Bertha shrugged her bony shoulders. “Neither of you truly had a name to ruin,” she said without inflection, stating as fact her opinion on Verity’s and Malcom’s worth.
“He’s a greater man than, with your twisted soul, you can ever know or appreciate.”
Bertha scoffed, “He’s a bounder just like your father.”
Verity snapped. “He is nothing like my father,” she spat, flying across the room, a finger outstretched. “My father left us nothing. He left me, and Livvie, selling our things and me working as a child. And Malcom?” Her heart flipped over in love and sorrow at a dream which had ended too soon. Even as that dream would have never been enough, she’d have greedily stolen all those moments as she could have. “Malcom has cared for those he called family. He’s given a home to them. Provided security—”
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