Page 72 of In Bed with the Earl

“I don’t have servants,” he clipped out.

Her clever and revealing gaze revealed the interest there. “Then who are they?”

More information he’d given her. Too much already. And he’d wager that was the very game she’d played when she brought up those names again. With a sneer, he stuck his face in hers. “I haven’t given you enough today to print in your column?” Heat splashed his cheeks. “It is unfortunate for you Fowler entered,” he taunted, determined to at last silence her. “You had me a moment’s away from having my trousers down. Imagine the story you could have written then. Hardly as romantic. A fancy woman rutted against the wall by the Lost H—”

She slapped him.

Hard. The ferocity of that blow, combined with the unexpectedness of it, brought his head whipping back and his ears ringing. Malcom flexed his jaw. Well, he’d certainly managed to end her questioning. A new appreciation swelled for the fearless minx.

“You d-didn’t have to be crude,” she shot back, bold even in her fear. He started over to her. Verity backed away until she ran into the curtains that shielded the streets below, and out of space. “And I’m not a fancy woman,” she went on, holding her palms up when he stopped in front of her. “I’m simply a woman attempting to do her work and care for her family. And you?” She gave him a pitying look. “You are so self-absorbed that you don’t care at all about the plight of anyone. You have properties. Ones that you keep empty. Not caring that you sacked servants who needed work.”

Malcom scraped his eyes over her, this woman who’d unsettled his world. “No, I don’t. And I’ve told you: I’m not a man who cares.” Or knows. He dropped a hand beside her head, half framing her in his arms. No good could come from speaking with her any more than he already had. No good had come from it, and only problems had faced him since he’d found her in the sewers. “And do you know, Verity? Those fine properties can stay empty until they crumble with time. Now get out.”

Instead of the last hasty flight she’d made in the dead of night two weeks earlier, Verity slowly straightened. “Very well. I won’t bother you again.”

“Good—see that you don’t,” he called after her retreating frame. “Oh, and Miss Lovelace?” She paused. “If you cross me again, I’ll ruin you.”

A faint shudder shook her frame, and despite that fear, she sent her chin tipping defiantly up. “You needn’t worry. I’ll not.” A moment later, Verity Lovelace was gone.

“The miserable minx.” How dare she enter his world and tell him how he ought to live. Or question the decisions he made. He owed her nothing. He owed no one anything, which was by design.

Stalking over to the window, Malcom edged his curtains open. He scoured the pavement, and then found her.

The young woman descended the four steps with all the regal grace of a queen. She drew her shoulders up, and for a moment, he expected her to look back. To challenge him with her gaze, just as she’d defied him at every turn. But she didn’t.

“Good,” he muttered into the quiet, the sough of his breath fanning the smudged glass panel and blurring the figure below. It’d be a good day when he never saw Verity Lovelace again.

You’d be lying to yourself if you don’t admit the exhilaration you feel run through you whenever she’s near.

As if she’d followed those damning silent thoughts, the ones indicating that she knew the unwitting fascination he had with her, the young woman stole that final look back.

He curled his lips up in a mocking smile and touched a pretend hat brim.

Even with the stretch of distance between them, he caught the slight wrinkling of her pert nose. She lingered there on the pavement. Here in the rookeries, where innocents were robbed of all and left bearing the scars of that onetime naivete.

Malcom balled his hands. She was not his problem. She’d come here of her own volition, risked her own foolish life and limb. One such as her, one who took on the care and responsibility of others, only found oneself on the losing end of life. That’d be her fate and not his.

No onewas his problem—as he preferred it.

You have properties. Ones that you keep empty. Not caring that you sacked servants who needed work ...

Aye, as she’d stated, he had properties, but empty ones without servants. A piercing pain shot to Malcom’s temples. An agonized hiss escaped through tightly clenched teeth, and Malcom caught his head in his hands, applying pressure in a bid to dull that stabbing sensation.

But it was no use. Agony continued washing over him in waves.

A face flashed behind his eyes. A voice. A pair, conversing. A towering, liveried servant, glancing down at a small boy with his palms upstretched ...An extra biscuit is yours. Now be on your way, Master P—

Gasping, Malcom jerked erect as the rest of that memory vanished. Sweat spilled from his brow and burnt his eyes, and he blinked back the sting of discomfort. He forced them open and searched again for the one responsible for the resurrection of demons that may as well have belonged to another.

Gone.

Upon the horizon, there wasn’t so much as a trace of Verity Lovelace.

Malcom scrubbed the sweat from his face. How dare she? How dare she come here and call him out? She knew nothing of it.

For that matter,heknew nothing of it. Not truly. Not his past. All the memories were murky at best, blank at worst.

Until now ... Until that distant echo of another place and another time with figures he couldn’t place, yet innately knew.I was that boy with that servant.

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