Page 42 of In Bed with the Earl

She wrinkled her pert nose. “Oh.”

Who was this woman with her absolute lack of artifice?

He held a brandy out. “Here.”

Verity hesitated, and then tiptoed over. Eyeing him with that same wariness she had in the sewers, she accepted that offering, and took a sip. She grimaced. “Good God, that’s vile!”

“Aye.” He’d always detested the stuff himself, and yet, there’d been a familiarity to the sight and smell of brandy that had proved oddly comforting. Those peculiar details he’d never before shared with anyone, and he didn’t intend to begin with a minx who cloaked herself in more secrets than Malcom himself.

Cradling her glass, she wandered about the chambers uninvited.

He stiffened.

This feeling of being exposed was an unfamiliar one. Largely because he’d never let anyone inside his rooms, and now because of whatever damned spell this spitfire possessed, he couldn’t bring himself to bully her into stopping.

Though something told him that Verity Lovelace, who took down grown men in the street and didn’t so much as flinch at a bloodied nose, wasn’t ever one to be bullied.

Cradling her still-full snifter in her palms, she paused periodically to examine various pieces he’d fished from the tunnels. Ones he’d not brought himself to sell for reasons he didn’t understand and had never cared enough to examine.

Verity stopped, and with almost mechanical movements, she set her drink down.

And Malcom knew the very moment she’d forgotten his presence and become wholly engrossed in the crude painting in an ornate, gilded frame that juxtaposed with the unsophisticated rendering on the canvas.

Angling her head, Verity stepped closer, contemplating the small beggar girl crouched on a corner stoop. In that small child, the artist had perfectly captured the wariness, exhaustion, and absolute lack of hope that came from living here.

Verity raised her fingertips close to the basket of ribbons the tiny peddler hawked.

“You like it?” he asked gruffly, not knowing where the question came from. Only knowing he himself hadn’t ever been able to sort out why he’d kept this particular piece.

“I ... There is a realness to it,” she said softly. “I was her.”

That admission came so faint he barely heard it. Or mayhap it was the first straightforward admission, voluntarily given, that took Malcom aback.

He moved closer, stopping just beyond her shoulder, and examined that piece with new eyes.

“I had a ribbon collection, until I didn’t. I placed each one in a basket and sold them at a corner until they were gone.”

That clue into her roots and background should be nothing more than a detail he locked away. Yet the image she’d painted of herself as she’d been—a struggling girl—was more vivid than the portrait before them. The desperation she spoke of was one he could understand. One that, despite all he’d amassed, the fortune he’d attained, stayed with him still. But then that was what set people in East London apart from the elevated members of the peerage, the strife that could never truly be forgotten. Not even when one rose up and freed oneself from the struggles of surviving.

Verity continued on to the next frame. He stood so close that her shoulder brushed his chest as she walked.

“Are you familiar with that, Verity?” he murmured. The young woman gave no indication of affront at his laying claim to her name. “Have you been that child?”Too.

Malcom had.

Bone weary with exhaustion as he’d regaled passersby with Scottish jigs for any coins they might toss his way.

Verity shook her head slowly. “No,” she murmured. “I was spared that.”

Aye, but wasn’t that the way of East London? One was spared one injustice but was the victim of ten more.

“Were ...you?” she ventured, casting that always assessing glance over her dainty shoulder, and leveling him with it. “That child?”

Malcom set his mouth, and ended the exchange that had become entirely too intimate. Abandoning Verity to her examination of his things, he returned to the window to search out the man who’d been looking for them.

“Is he still out there?”

He peered out at the darkened streets. The lone figure out there, a small lad, darted along the cobblestones. No doubt on his way to streets that were filled with potential pockets to pick. “I don’t see him.” That should be sufficient enough to send her on her way. So why didn’t he?

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