Page 139 of In Bed with the Earl

From the most revered members of thetonto the poorest of the toshers to the wealthiest of the merchant class, all had come out that morn.

The eclectic gathering of people now sat in a crowded auditorium.

As they spoke, their voices rolled together; coarsened Cockneys, blended with the crispest of the King’s English, echoed from the twenty-foot ceilings.

People born of different stations, who rarely acknowledged the others’ existence, had been joined in an unexpected commonality: rabid curiosity. After all, it was the story everyone wanted. Or rather, thelateststory everyone wished to hear. Someday there would be a fresher piece of gossip, or a newer story, that men and women would crave the details of.

But for now, this was the one that consumed people.

Once, Malcom would have only been riddled with rage at those interlopers scrounging for details about his life the way the poor begged for scraps in the streets. That anger had since left him.

Because of her ...

As if she’d heard those unspoken thoughts, Verity slipped her fingers into his. She gave a light squeeze, and raised them to her lips for a gentle kiss. “You are going to be brilliant, Malcom,” she said softly.

“Yes, but will I still be brilliant alone?” When the other key player was missing.

Verity held his gaze. “You’re never alone, Malcom.”

His throat worked. “No. No, you are right on that score, love.” His gaze traveled out, bypassing the strangers in the crowd and homing in on the first row ... the front row of the auditorium occupied by Bram, Fowler, Giles, and Billy. The four of them sat, shoulder to shoulder, pride beaming in their eyes. Malcom wasn’t alone. In those he’d spent a lifetime with on the streets, he’d found family. And in Verity.

And behind that family, there sat another.

A row of ladies and gentlemen who were strangers, and yet connected to him by another.

Together, they stood there, side by side, surveying the room as one.

“Are you nervous?” Verity asked.

He hesitated. “Yes,” he allowed, giving her that truth. For the first time in the whole of his life, there was no shame in that acknowledgment. Before Verity, he’d have seen the admission as a weakness he couldn’t dare own. Nor was it worry about appearing before that crowd. Rather, his unease came in appearing before them alone. Malcom reached inside his jacket and grabbed the folded paper there. “None of this makes sense if he doesn’t arrive.” As guests began claiming their seats, true panic began to set in. “I’ll have to rewrite it. Only ...” He grimaced. “There’s not time to rewrite anything. I’ll have to reorder my thoughts.” Malcom cursed. “I should have prepared an alternate speech—”

Verity pressed her fingertips lightly against his lips. “He will be here,” she said simply.

“You’re so certain.”

“He’ll be here,” she repeated.

The “he” in question being none other than Baron Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke, who’d been due nearly ten minutes ago. Except, what if the other man had simply gotten what he needed from Malcom ...

“And his coming, Malcom, will not be because you’ve forgiven the debt that once hung over him and Poppy,” Verity murmured with her usual uncanny ability to sort through the thoughts roiling in his head long before he was able to himself identify the source of his unease. “He’ll be here because he promised he would,” she said simply.

“And if he isn’t?” he insisted, forcing a casualness he didn’t feel.

“Then you will be fine without him.”

“What faith you have in me, lady wife.”

She bristled. “And how could I not? A man who’s accomplished all you have? The most successful tosher to ever—”

Malcom claimed her lips in a sweet, tender, too-brief kiss.

He drew back, and Verity blinked slowly.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“For what?”

For attempting to distract him from the words he’d soon deliver to the crowd beyond the corridor. “I wouldn’t have been here had it not been for you.” He’d not be moments away from entering that room before a sea of strangers and saying any words, let alone the ones he intended to speak: about his life and the lives of so many here in London.

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