He swallowed a sound of disgust. Get ahold of yourself . . . “Childlike . . . you say?”
“But clearly not a child.” Giles pressed his forehead against the glass and peered out. “She’s still rounded in the right places.”
Lusting after the woman who’d ruined his existence was a new and entirely unfamiliar low. That reminder was sufficient enough to kill all thoughts of Verity Lovelace.
“I will say this one is a bit severe. More so than any of the other wide-eyed innocents to come your way.”
“I don’t need a damned cataloging,” he said tersely.
“Come, you catalog everything. Even those things you’ve had taken from the Maxwell earl before you.” Giles prattled on anyway. “With the way the lady’s drawn her hair back, she must be giving herself a deuced headache.”
Malcom continued writing. His pencil flew over the page.
“That is . . . odd, though.”
Unlike prior attempts at riling him, the genuine stupefaction stilled Malcom’s hand. “What is it?” After all, the only thing more perilous than incongruities were incongruities that went ignored.
“There’s no doting papa. No protective maid. This one has come alone.”
Alone . . .
“Completely alone,” Giles clarified. “She must be a different sort of desperate than the others.”
Plump and short? Severe hairstyle? A different sort of desperate . . . Nay. It was impossible. After all, there were any number of women to fit that physical description.
“And she’s a determined look to her.”
Malcom went absolutely still.
And that was when he knew . . .
Surging to his feet, he stormed over, pushing Giles out of the way so he could have unobstructed access to the window. He peered out the grimy pane, and damned the dirt.
And sure enough, there, attired in an all-too-familiar black muslin dress, she stood.
Nay, his mind merely played tricks on him. Malcom jammed the backs of his hands into his eyes and rubbed, and when he looked out once more, the sight remained. She remained.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
“I take it you know this one?”
He ignored Giles’s question, his gaze riveted on the minx thumping a fist away at his front door.
A door that Bram had been instructed not to open in greeting of anyone else that day . . . or any day until Malcom gave word—which he had no intention of giving.
KnockKnockKnock.
She paused midhammering, and let her arm fall. Verity backed away from the door.
Malcom narrowed his eyes. She’d gathered, then, that he’d no intention of allowing her entry. Good, the miserable harp—
Just then, she lifted a hand to her eyes, shielding them from the early-summer sun. And then slowly, ever so slowly, she crept her gaze higher and higher—until their eyes met.
And with two hundred feet between them, tension sizzled like the earth just before a lightning strike.
Verity’s full mouth formed a perfect pout as she motioned—
At his shoulder, Giles broke out into a laugh. “Good God, is she ordering you to open your door?”
“Indeed,” he muttered.
With a regal toss of her head, Verity returned to her post at the door and set to pounding it again. This time harder, the heavy boom carrying the stretch of distance between there and Malcom’s window. It was an impressive, continual beating sure to drive a man mad—
And apparently had already driven Bram to the point of lunacy. The rapping stopped as the older man appeared below.
Giles peered down. “What in God’s name is she saying to him?”
“I’ve not a damned idea.” After Bram’s last misstep with the shrew, he’d learned his lesson well. “I only know Bram is aware that if he values his post, he’ll not allow—”
The old tosher smiled and beckoned her forward.
Verity Lovelace entered, and then the door closed.
Several beats of silence passed. “He appears to have allowed it,” Giles said with more of that infernal amusement.
There was something a good deal safer feeling in walking through Malcom’s front doors.
At least, safer than being secreted away through the alleys with none the wiser, and whisked inside back entrances.
Or at least, as she was permitted entry to the cramped foyer, that was what she told herself. That was what she attempted to convince herself of.
Nor was it her current company she was worried after. “Your eyes look better, Mr. Bram,” she lauded as she tugged off her gloves.
He flashed a crooked grin. “And they doesn’t sting anymore, either.”
“That is splendid news, indeed,” she said, giving him a cheerful pat on the back. “There’s still the matter of your limp.”
The brutish-looking man who’d met Verity and Malcom in the kitchens a fortnight ago marched forward, his left leg dragging slightly behind him as if the muscles had ceased to work. He blocked them at the bottom of the stairwell. “North ain’t wanting visitors.”
“Yes.” She flashed him her most winning smile, the same one she’d donned when she’d asked to be admitted. “But surely His Lordship will accept one.” Verity directed that at the only hope she had.
Bram grinned back, but a sharp glare from the other fellow killed that smile and her hopes.
A mask descended over the sentry’s scarred face. “He don’t go by ‘’is Lordship.’”
Not for the first time, a question reared itself: Who were these old, scarred men who dwelled here? Nor did that question come from the story she sought to write, but rather from a genuine need to know about the enigmatic figure that was the Earl of Maxwell.
“No,” she murmured, beating her gloves together lightly. “He doesn’t prefer to go by his title. That is true, is it not?”
“Just said as much,” he said with an absolute absence of the rhetorical. “Now, Oi think ya need to leave.”
I think, not You must. And it was that which confirmed he’d never be able to comfortably toss her out. Verity stuffed her tattered gloves inside the pocket sewn along the front of her gown. “I’m afraid I can’t leave.”
He paused. Narrowing his eyes, he looked her over. “You can’t?”
And she wouldn’t. Not until she spoke with Malcom.
“There are matters I need to discuss with Malcom.” Once again, she did a sweep of the darkened halls. She knew he was here, and she wasn’t leaving until she had an audience. Verity opened her mouth to say as much.
Just then, the resolute guard shifted his weight. His face pulled in a grimace.
His leg pained him. “I’ve something that can help with that.”
“I told ya she did,” Bram piped in on a loud whisper.
Encouraged by the angry fellow’s silence, she went on to explain. “I grew up in Epsom Common. Have you ever heard of it?”
There was a beat of silence. “No,” the older man said grudgingly.
“Some years back there was a cow herder who stopped to allow his cattle a drink from a nearby pool. The animals could not drink it—”
“Why?” Bram cut in.
“It was bitter tasting,” she explained before looking back to the more stoic guard. “That same day Mr. Wicker allowed his livestock to wander into the water, and the ones who were injured? They saw their wounds healed.” Both men stared on with wide eyes as she shared the telling. “Tales of the healing properties spread, and from then on, visitors would come to the pool. People suffering from gout and stomach upsets all were cured.”