Bertha snorted. “To find that bloody duke.”
“He’s an earl,” Verity muttered, struggling with the clasp at her throat. “But yes. He is the reason.”
Livvie moved aside Verity’s fingers, and swiftly saw to the task herself. Taking the garment, she draped it over one of the two chairs in their apartments. “You’ve searched for him. You can’t find him. Why can’t you simply make it up?”
“I cannot make it up, Livvie,” she said gently. She’d dealt before in fabricated truths. Her entire existence on the outskirts of London had been one.
Bertha thumped the table twice. “The girl is right. You make it up.”
Verity hugged her arms around her middle. Of course they’d be of a like opinion. But then, desperation compelled people to make any manner of decisions they’d not otherwise make. For them—for herself—she wished to do it. “I cannot,” she said tiredly. Not if she wanted to live with herself in good conscience.
“’Course you can,” Bertha cried out.
Livvie tugged Verity by the hand and led her to the small kitchen table, forcing her into a seat. “I don’t see why not,” she said softly. “The gent doesn’t wish to be found. He’s not coming out.”
“And better off for not finding him, I say. Any man who prefers living in the sewers to being a fancy duke is madder than the late King George,” Bertha mumbled before quitting the kitchen and heading for her rooms.
After she’d gone, Livvie waited several moments, then sank to a knee beside Verity. “The people want a story,” she said. “They don’t care about what was real and what is false . . . A story is what sells.”
“The girl is right.” Bertha’s voice came muffled from the other side of the panel.
They looked toward the older woman’s room and then back at one another, sharing a smile. It appeared Verity had found the one topic that had managed to unite the pair that so often failed to see eye to eye.
Verity’s smile was quick to fade. “I’m not fabricating a story.”
“But—”
“Please, don’t ask me to do that. For when the lie came to light”—which it invariably would—“we’d be precisely where we are now.” Only with no chance of keeping her post, and a reputation ruined. “I’ll not lie to sell a story.” And certainly not a lie about a person’s past.
“Lying’s a good deal safer than starving,” her sister said.
Verity flinched. “I’m going to find him.”
“And how do you intend to do that?”
Seated at the table, staring into the lone flame dancing, Verity found she rather didn’t know. But she would find him. There was no other choice. Someone in East London must know of—
Her lips parted.
“What is it?” Livvie asked, concern in her voice.
Ignoring that question, Verity fixed on not what her sister was saying but earlier words uttered by another. Verity froze. After all, known as Garrulous Bertha by all those in their corner of East London, the older woman tended to easily spew words, as she was wont to do. Still . . . Verity jumped up, and with Livvie calling after her, she bolted to Bertha’s rooms. She didn’t bother with a knock.
When the door exploded open, the woman didn’t even look up from her knitting needles.
“How did you know that?” Verity demanded.
Bertha’s gnarled fingers continued darning away. “Huh?”
Verity sprinted across the room and plucked the needles from her hands. “You said something to the effect of a man who prefers to live in the sewers.” Words that had been too specific.
Bertha lifted her rounded shoulders in a lazy shrug. “That be the word on the streets.” She reached for her darning needles, but Verity held them out of reach.
“By whom?” she asked slowly, as if speaking to a child.
The older woman’s lips formed a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile. “My sweetheart.”
Her . . .
Livvie’s giggle sounded from beyond Verity’s shoulder.
Bertha scowled. “Hush. You think it so shocking that I might have found myself a suitor?”
The girl’s laughter only deepened.
Verity gave her sister a look and, when she’d finally silenced her, returned all her focus to Bertha. She fell to a knee beside her fraying upholstered chair, one of the remaining pieces left from the lifetime of comfort they’d enjoyed while the earl had lived. “And . . . who is this gent?”
“He’s a tosher.”
What . . . ? Puzzling her brow, Verity glanced over at Livvie, but the younger girl merely stared back with wide eyes.
“What is a tosher?” Verity pressed Bertha.
“Pfft. One would think you were two fancy gels.” Instead of the by-blows they were. The implication hung there . . . without inflection, and yet, still stinging as it always had . . . being bastard born—even if it was to an earl. “Tosshher,” she repeated, as if adding an extra syllable and slight emphasis to the word might somehow make it mean something to Verity. “He’s a sewer hunter. Scavenges. Pans and retrieves tosh. Well, more than tosh because ‘tosh’ is copper,” she explained. “This fellow finds himself a whole lot of riches down in that waste-filled water.”
Livvie’s face pulled. “That is disgusting.”
“Be that as it may, the fellows doing it are better off than your sister here, trying to write a story for a gossip column.”
Her mind racing, Verity fell back on her heels. It made sense. All these months she’d been scouring London for anyone with a hint of the gentleman’s identity, she’d been searching the wrong places. Asking the wrong people. In short, the Earl of Maxwell didn’t walk amongst them. Rather, he’d been under her all the while.
There was a tug at Verity’s sleeve, and she glanced over.
“What are you thinking?” her sister asked.
And for the first time since she’d been handed the impossible assignment, Verity smiled. “I’m going toshing.”
“That isn’t a word,” Bertha corrected, much as she had when instructing Verity as a child.
Verity’s smile deepened. “It is now.”
Chapter 3
THE LONDONER
THE HUNT!
All of London is in search of the gentleman whose fortunes have been reversed. He remains a mystery to all . . . There is only one certainty: the Lost Heir has no wish to be found!
M. Fairpoint
Verity had done next to everything in order to survive.
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.