Page 10 of In Bed with the Earl

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 beingnothinglike 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 ofThe 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, thatwhooshof fabric grating.

For years she’d been fighting for her place atThe 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.

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