Page 19 of In Bed with the Earl

Or so she’d believed.

The following evening, attired in one of her only three dresses and a pair of too-tight slippers belonging to her sister, Verity realized just how wrong she’d been.

“Are you having second doubts, gel?” Bertha asked loud enough that her voice carried damningly down Brook’s Mews.

Nay, more like third and fourth and fifth doubts.“Shh,”Verity said gently.

“Now you’re so worried about getting yourself caught? We’ve been standing here for the better part of five minutes.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” she muttered, and then forced herself to kneel. Ignoring the cold of the pavement penetrating her thin skirts. Wishing all the while she’d had Livvie accompany her instead. Knowing this was no place for her sister. Furthermore, Bertha was the one with connections to the toshers, and having two women and a sheltered young woman hovering around the sewer opening would only risk notice. As it was, Bertha, with her failure to appreciate the importance of silence, posed danger enough. Verity wrestled with the grate, her muscles straining under the unexpected weight of the protective covering. At last, the unrelenting cover gave, and she used all her strength heaving it up.

The stench of rot filled her nostrils, and she gagged, covering her nose in a futile bid to block the smell of it.

Bertha leaned forward, and then swiftly drew back. “Good God.” She pressed her forearm over her face.

Nay, there was no God down there.

“I suspect it is going to get a good deal harder when you’re in there,” the older woman pointed out with her usual blunt honesty.

And damn if she wasn’t right. Forcing her arm to her side, Verity eyed the opening.

She could do this.

How difficult could it be? Climb down—

And search for a man who didn’t wish to be found? So much so that he’d forsake a title in place of ... this?

Verity scrabbled with her lip. Mayhap Bertha was right, after all. Verity was a-hunting a madman. For no sane person could prefer this life to the one awaiting him if he simply claimed his fortune. And for the first time since she’d been handed her assignment from Lowery, unease wound its way through her for altogether different reasons. Not from the sheer desperation to locate and tell the story, but from what would happen if—when?—she did locate the man in question.

An image slipped in: a beastlike figure, with the stench of filth clinging to him. Wild eyes. A feral mouth.

I cannot do this ...

“Mayhap you don’t go in,” Bertha murmured with her first vocal doubts raised. “Mayhap there is another way to find him.”

There wasn’t.

“I’m going, I’m going,” she muttered again. Only, as she remained standing there, she couldn’t determine whether she was trying to convince the other woman she was going to climb down—or herself.

Either way, before her courage deserted her, Verity shimmied onto her belly until she dangled with half her body in and the other half out of the opening. Then, slowly, she lowered herself down into the sewers.

She choked on the acrid scent that slapped at her.

Her arms ached. Her muscles screamed. But for the life of her, she could not let herself make the final descent.

There has to be another way.

“There isn’t,” Bertha whispered, confirming she’d spoken aloud. “Only way down into the sewers is through one of them grates,” she murmured, misunderstanding Verity’s wonderings. “Now you should hurry on with yourself. Before someone comes and we don’t have either our lives or your story to show for it.”

And in the end, it was that ominous warning about either of the fates awaiting her that compelled her. Verity closed her eyes and let go; her stomach dropped along with her in a fall that seemed eternal.

She landed hard, sinking into a small puddle, the freezing-cold water instantly penetrating the thin soles of the pair of slippers she’d received just that morning. “Bloody hell,” she whispered, her voice pinging off the stone walls.

Verity climbed her gaze up the six feet between her and that lone exit, and her stomach flipped over once more. How in blazes was she to get back out now? “Bertha,” she whispered. “Bertha,” she repeated, this time more insistently. And for one horrifying moment, she believed she’d been duped, lured, and left to die in this dark pit where none would ever know.

But then ...

Bertha ducked her greying head into the opening. “What?” she cried, her voice ricocheting around the brick walls.

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