“Aye,” Fowler agreed, a dimple marring his sunken, wrinkled cheeks. “But you won’t.”
Nay, he wouldn’t. And they knew it. Malcom removed his shirt and tossed it aside. Shucking out of his damp garments, he submerged his frame in the steaming water, slid under, and hurriedly scraped his hands through his hair.
He was greeted with a flask under his nose. Malcom took a long swallow, then handed it over.
“Ya ’ave to admit. This ’as been a bit of a surprise,” Bram noted, tenacious as a starved St. Giles pup with a bone tossed to the cobblestones.
“What?” Malcom asked between tight lips.
Fowler shrugged. “Well, it’s just it ain’t every day that ya bring back a foine one loike her and her foine talk . . . and let her into your rooms.”
A fine one like her . . . and her fine talk . . .
Malcom scrubbed the water from his eyes.
“I’ve questions to put to her,” he said, unable to keep a defensive edge from creeping in.
The other man snorted. “Ya’ve put questions to lots of women . . . lots of people before. Never done it in yar private suites.”
Malcom washed the filth from his body. “This one is . . .” He clamped his lips closed. Different. She was—
“Different?” Fowler drawled, taking another sip.
Malcom rinsed off the soap. “Go to hell,” he muttered, earning a round of laughter from the old codgers.
The mouthy former tosher tossed a towel to him, and Malcom caught it and wiped the water from his eyes. “And she’s got ya repeatin’ yarself? That ain’t loike ya. Over yar heels for a pretty piece.”
She wasn’t a pretty piece. “This has nothing to do with . . .” The fact that she’d enormous siren’s eyes, eyes that had been filled with an innocence he’d believed to be mere fiction splashed upon the pages of literature. Or the way her wet gown had clung to her every curve.
Fowler lifted a bushy brow.
“We were set upon. And I’d have answers as to who was after her and what she was doing in my sewers.”
Bram’s thick brows crept up a fraction, creasing that already heavily wrinkled forehead. “She was in the sewers? That one?”
Unease trickled in. Were the toshers truly incorrect in their skepticism? As a rule, Malcom didn’t trust anyone.
“Aye.” Precisely. “Fowler, get the hell out so I can enjoy a moment’s peace.” And so the old man could get some proper rest. No good could come from him being on his still-unsteady feet.
The battered tosher levered himself to a standing position.
Malcom frowned. He wasn’t careless. It was a charge that had never been leveled at him . . . in large part because he’d no people that he called friends or family. In larger part because he was nothing if not cautious at every turn. Or he had been. “Bram—”
“Oi’m already headed up there now,” he assured him, not bothering to look back. “Oi’ll stand guard until ya’re ready for her.”
Malcom hurried through the remainder of his bath so that he might seek out the enigmatic Miss Verity Lovelace and determine what in hell a woman like her was doing in a place like the rookeries.
Chapter 7
THE LONDONER
FROM BEGGAR TO EARL . . . !
There have been reports that since he was kidnapped, the Earl of Maxwell survived on the streets by begging . . . It is hard to expect any such person might fit in within the world of Polite Society . . .
M. Fairpoint
Verity remained motionless long after the man—North—had brought the panel shut behind him.
Heart hammering, she pressed her cold, bloodstained palms against the door, and borrowed support from the frame. And concentrated on drawing in slow, steadying breaths.
Since her parents’ deaths, she’d prided herself on the life she’d made as a reporter. She’d conducted research and crafted stories that society had craved more of. But those? The men and women whom she’d written of in her articles . . . they had all been people of the peerage. Their lives largely comfortable with the exception of scandals that, though interesting on-dits, had not been dangerous. In short, her work, and that which had gone into it, all had been safe.
Turning, Verity rested her back against the panel and hugged her arms around her middle, bunching the muslin fabric of a quality she’d enjoyed only long, long ago when her father had been alive and there had been funds to attire his by-blow daughter in fine garments. She took in the rooms belonging to Mr. North—her prison?
She’d nearly been drowned, eaten by sewer rats, and then set upon by a stranger. And by the weapons he’d pointed at her and Mr. North, there could be no doubting how that exchange would have gone—had it not been for Mr. North. He’d delivered her from certain peril. A panicky laugh bubbled past her lips. He’d delivered her from peril . . . this same man who’d placed a blade to her throat, demanding answers.
Who was he? Hero or beast?
Or was it possible for a man to be both a redeemer and monster, all rolled into one?
Her gaze found the painting hanging near Mr. North’s bed, that gilded frame better suited to the articles her late father, the earl, had brought to Verity’s mother and personally hung about the modest cottage. The rendering upon that canvas, done in oils, captured a blissfully peaceful, bucolic country scene. It was an image so vivid and still so real.
And yet, this . . . ruthless Mr. North hung that work here. In fact, now that her terror had receded to a disquiet she could control, Verity took in the other details of her surroundings. Of Mr. North’s rooms. His mahogany bed frame. His porcelain bath. The muslin he’d pulled from an extravagant walnut armoire with its beveled mirror and painted floral scene upon the heavily carved wood panels.
Verity’s mind raced with questions. He wasn’t a tosher; so what was he? Who was he? He wasn’t her business. Any interest in him was irrelevant to the information she truly sought—nay, needed. So why was she unable to shake the countless questions tumbling around her mind?
Verity wandered over to an exotic green-and-pink embroidered chessboard. Intrigued, she gripped her towel in one hand, and with the other picked up the pink queen. She ran her thumb along the contoured ribbing of that most powerful piece before setting it down.
Verity did another sweep of the place she’d been brought to.
How did such a man come to be in possession of such wealth? Furthermore . . . who was he, this man who prowled the streets in fine garments and spoke flawless King’s English, but carried himself with the ruthless ease of any London street tough?
He’d gibed her at every turn, then tended to her injury. Granted, there’d been nothing warm about his ministrations; he’d been perfunctory, as methodical as a doctor tending a patient . . . And yet, he’d cared for her. And he’d not left her to fend for herself in the streets. Therefore, that surely said something about the stranger?
Or mayhap you’re merely telling yourself that. Mayhap that was far easier than considering the possibility that she’d, in fact, traded one threat for another.
Unable to shake those misgivings, Verity loosened her death grip on the dress North had given her and made her way to the bath.
“A bath.” She exhaled those two words for the reverent prayer they were.