Page 97 of In Bed with the Earl

Her smile slipped. “What is it?”

“You smile like you mean it,” he said flatly. And he didn’t know what to do with or make of it ...

Setting down her nearly empty cup of frozen ice, Verity dabbed at the corners of her lips. “And why shouldn’t I?” With that, she closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the sun. Those rays bathed her cheeks in a soft glow, illuminating the details he’d not noted until now: a dusting of freckles along the sides of her nose. A cream-white quality of skin so soft to the touch that his fingers twitched with the desire to explore it once more ... as he’d done a fortnight ago.

Resisting her quixotic pull, Malcom nudged her foot with his. Her already-wide violet eyes went all the rounder. “You find nothing disconcerting in this.” He gave a discreet wave of his hand, gesturing out to the opposite end of the lake, where morning visitors to the park guided their curricles about.

“Oh, on the contrary.” Verity gathered up her parasol from the bench. “I findeverythingdisconcerting in it.” Snapping open the frilly article, she angled it, putting up that slight barrier as though they were two lovers who sought to steal a moment of privacy from society’s prying eyes. “I no more wish to be here than you. And yet ... for the first time in more years than I can remember, I have no worries about where I’ll live or whether there’s enough food. Even this ...” She tipped her parasol back so the sun’s rays bathed their faces, and her eyes slid closed. “I’ve not had the freedom to so much as feel the sun on my face in the middle of a spring day.”

Neither had Malcom, and yet, his had been a decision bred of preference. Verity’s had been a product of the work she’d had to do. The same need for work that found her in a deal with his own devilish self. He forced his gaze away from her face, looking out, unwilling ... and unable to meet her eyes. Because he didn’t want to think of how Verity Lovelace’s ruthless pursuit of him had been an act born of desperation. How there had been ... was still, in fact, a younger sister with innocent eyes, a smaller, younger version of the woman who now sat before him. Because Malcom didn’t want it to matter.

He didn’t wantherto matter, in any way. Unnerved, he settled his gaze on the crowded Berkeley Square streets.

“You should eat it.”

He blinked slowly.

Verity motioned to the crystal glass of untouched ice. “If for no other reasons than because: one, you won’t have to talk to me, and two, our terseness might be passed off as your enjoyment of the sweet treat.” Her eyes twinkled. “And because you’re very close to ending up with sticky fingers.”

On perfect cue, a drop slipped down the rim of the clear glass, and landed on his knuckle.

Malcom cursed.

Leaning forward, she spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “I told you.” She winked, and then tugging free the monogrammed kerchief from his jacket pocket, she proceeded to wipe off the melted ice.

With her head bent to that task, Malcom stared on, unable to look away from her ... or the task she completed. When was the last time anyone had ever undertaken such a small but tender gesture where he was concerned? For that matter, when was the first time?Hadthere been a first time? People knew better than to approach him, let alone touch him. There’d been whores he’d bedded, but their every action had been purposeful, driven by sex and devoid of tenderness.

“There,” Verity said, and with a pleased little nod, she turned over his kerchief.

Reflexively, Malcom accepted back that scrap of cloth, and his gaze went to the gold letters embroidered upon the fabric. He ran the callused pad of his thumb over the TP EARL OFM emblazoned there.

Initials that belonged to another. The man who’d served in the role of earl for these past years. A man he’d never met, but who’d profited from Malcom’s absence these past years. And according to Steele, the loss of parents that Malcom had no recollection of. Unbidden, his gaze drifted over the heads of those nosy biddies to the front facade of 7–8 Berkeley Square.

“You remembered Gunter’s.”

“Hmm?”It took a moment for that question to penetrate that all-too-familiar haze.

Only it hadn’t been a question. Verity stared back with a solemnness to her eyes that revealed too much of her thoughts.

“Aye,” he said gruffly.

“Did you ... come as a child?”

Several drops of orange ice splashed the top of his hand, the moisture cool. He stared blankly down at them, more coward than he’d ever credited before this, because he couldn’t meet Verity’s eyes. “I don’t know.”

There it was ... the truth. At best what had come before his time as an orphaned child on the streets of East London were murky shadows, buried in darkness. At worst, there was an emptiness.

Had she pressed him, he would have kept silent. He would have cursed her for asking, and mayhap the young woman knew that. Mayhap the same lady who’d demonstrated an eerie intuitiveness to what he was thinking and feeling had gathered as much. “My recollections are few.” That allowance came grudgingly to his own ears.

Verity didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then slowly, she brought her parasol closed. “Whenever my father visited, he always came with ribbons and these little flat chocolate discs, covered in nonpareils.” She held her thumb and index finger in a tiny circle, demonstrating the size of that small treat. “After my mum died, he was forced to move us to a small apartment in London. He still visited. I never saw him smile much again after she died, but he’d visit,” she tacked on as if it were important that Malcom know that much about the shameful man who’d sired her. As if she sought to defend him.

He struggled to follow through her unexpected shift in discourse and telling him about her family.

“The good thing about being in London was we were close enough that he could frequently visit, but far enough to keep us out of the eyes of Polite Society. I always wondered, how did he travel with chocolates without them melting? But they didn’t.” A wistful smile danced on her lips. “I digress ... just before Papa came to visit, he’d send a note alerting us, because he knew one of my favorite things in all the world was to wait at the bottom step and then race to greet his carriage. It was my favorite part of the day.” Her smile dimmed, and with it stole all the light. “Even when I was determined to hate him for having a legitimate family whom he needn’t keep secret, rushing to meet him was one of my most beloved times, because when he was with us, I could pretend we were his real family.” Her gaze grew as distant as her hushed, lyrical voice. It was the moment Malcom knew she’d lost herself in her telling and forgotten his presence.

Against all better judgment, against all control, he hung on, riveted to this, the widest window she’d let open on the questions he had of her own existence. That world she described, of a solitary girl, awaiting a beloved papa. Isolated even as it had been, it was far more than Malcom had ever known, and because of that, as fictional as the books he’d filched as a child from unsuspecting patrons outside Hatchards.

“One day,” Verity carried on, her voice murmurous, “I received the missive, and I went out to meet him.” Her expression darkened. “Only he didn’t come. He wasn’t there ...” The long column of her throat moved up and down several times. “There was another. A man.” Verity shook her head and returned to the moment—and to Malcom. “Apparently, he was my father’s man-of-affairs. He’d come to inform us of my father’s passing.” She rested her callused, ink-stained fingers on his knee, and lifted her gaze up to meet his. “The thing of it is, Malcom ... from that moment on, for so long I couldn’t remember anything of that day: not the weather, not what I was wearing. Not what he said. And all the memories I carried of my father were lost. Occasionally, I would hear echoes of my own sobs. Or ...” She creased her brow. “Ithoughtthey were my tears. It was as if they belonged to another. I couldn’t make anything clear of the happiest memories that had come before it. I couldn’t bring them into focus. Because it was just too h-hard.” Her voice broke, and she immediately made a clearing sound with her throat. His chest constricted with an all-too-foreign pain ... pain for another. For her. “Perhaps, Malcom, it is easiernotremembering than fully owning the pain of that moment.” There was a heartbeat’s pause. “For me,” she added softly. The meaning of her telling was unmistakable: he didn’t remember because the memories were too dark. Too painful.

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