Page 24 of In Bed with the Earl

“Aye.” Giles flashed a wide grin. “And you know I don’t care.”

No, he didn’t.

It was an insolence Malcom didn’t tolerate in anyone else. Likely because there was an obstinacy to the other man he could relate to, and had since he’d come upon him nearly dead in the sewers of London.

“Answer me this ... ,” the other man said, dropping into a chair and kicking his legs out.

“No.” He didn’t answer questions about himself. And not simply because there was no need for a person to know anything about him, which did hold true as well ... Rather, it was because much of Malcom’s life was a mystery ... even to him, and he preferred it that way.

“If you’ve no interest in that title or that life, why’ve you gone and hired yourself that bootlicker to see to those riches? To take more from the blighter who’s now out a title?”

Riches.

It was the correct word to describe the several hundred thousand pounds he’d inherited. And the countless pounds more sitting there in properties ... properties all over England. Places he’d never been ... and more ... places he had no desire to be... Please, don’t. God, don’t ...His own cries of long ago ricocheted in his mind until vomit churned in his belly. “What do you want?” he asked impatiently. “Don’t you have a sewer to see to?”

“I found information, information you should be aware of ... Someone is coming for you ...” Giles’s words droned on as a memory trickled in.

Long ago. A faint echo that hummed and buzzed in his mind. A child’s voice ...

Someone is coming for me ... Someone is coming ...

Then, all at once, the present rushed up to meet him. Blinking, Malcom shoved aside the foreign memory. Or imagining. Those weren’t his memories.

“What?” At last, he let go. His feet hit the floor, and Malcom flipped his hair, shaking the excess sweat from those strands.

Giles grabbed a towel from the hook on the wall and tossed it over, and Malcom wiped his face. “Someone has been asking questions about the sewers. Tonight, I saw a pair entering.”

He slowly lowered the damp cloth. “When?” he whispered.

The other man lifted a shoulder in a loose shrug. “Twenty minutes—”

Malcom’s black expletive drowned out the remainder of those words. “And you waited to tell me?” He shoved the tails of his shirt inside his trousers, stalked over to a hook, and yanked free a dark wool jacket.

“Seemed like you had important business to see to,” Giles said dryly.

Sitting on a wood stool, Malcom proceeded to tug on a boot, all the while tamping down another curse. “Is there nothing you don’t find amusement in?” he snapped.

“Is there anything youdo?” the other man drawled.

“No,” he said flatly as he pulled on his other boot. There wasn’t time for laughter or amusement in the rookeries. Not as long as one wished to stay living.

“Corner of Charing Cross. Here.” Giles grabbed the seven-foot pole and tossed it to Malcom.

He easily caught it and started out. After Sanders’s visit, he was spoiling for a damned fight. And he intended to have it.

A short while later, Malcom slid the grate off. Using his right arm, he lowered himself through the opening, and then reached up with his free hand to drag the grate into place.

He let himself fall.

The sound of his feet striking the ground was muted by the distant mutterings echoing down the tunnel.

Narrowing his eyes, Malcom did a meticulous sweep, and then started forward. As he walked, he scoured his gaze over tunnels and crevices more familiar than the place he now slept. The commotion that had greeted him had since faded and ushered in a silence broken only by the occasionaldrip-dripof the sewer water and the desperate squeak of a hungry rat.

Up ahead, the forward path he’d traversed so many times before stood blocked. Malcom slowed his steps, taking in that small heap of stones that had fallen.

Those loose bricks had seen countless men and children dead in these places, discovered long after they’d been pinned or knocked out, their bodies feasted on by the rats so that only bones were left to greet the toshers there to replace them.

And then he heard it ...

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