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, he knew 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.
“Enough,” he croaked, needing to hear his own voice, to hear anything other than the loud buzzing in his ears in order to ground himself firmly in reality and focus on a safer outlet for his rage. The insolent virago who’d dared to enter his residence and call him out.
Not caring that you sacked servants who needed work . . .
He didn’t care. He didn’t.
And yet . . .
If he didn’t care, then why not allow those people to remain as they’d been, tending an empty household and toiling away at their miserable existences, just as Malcom himself was?
“Bram,” he thundered.
The bulky former tosher limped in several moments later. “Aye?”
Malcom frowned. As long as he’d known the other man, he had been lame. “It’s gotten worse.”
Scratching at his bald brow, Bram eyed him strangely.
And mayhap he was strange. The minx with all her accusations and questions had messed with him. “Your leg,” he clarified, clipping those two syllables out.
“Ah.” Bram brightened, and a wide grin split his heavily scarred face. “But moi eyes are better.” Aye, they were indeed. “The little miss helped. Said she has something that would ’elp with my leg.”
As the half-besotted tosher prattled on about the virtuous Verity Lovelace, Malcom’s eyelid twitched.
Bram seemed to register that involuntary tic, for he abruptly stopped midpraise for the minx. “Is there somethin’ ya wanted?” the old tosher put forward hesitantly.
“No,” he gritted out. “Yes.” What in hell was wrong with him? What madness had the witch inflicted?
As eager to please as he’d been since Malcom had hired him on, Bram stared expectantly back.
“Sanders . . . the . . .” Malcom grimaced. “My man-of-affairs.” Because regardless of whether or not he wished it, the man answered to him. “Tell him to hire back the damned servants he’d previously sacked.”
“And do what with them?”
“And . . . and . . . hire them back,” he finished lamely, waving a hand. “Their former posts. Let them have them. If they want them.”
“Anything else?”
He shook his head tightly, and Bram turned to go. Only . . . “Aye. Tell Sanders I’m done with his visits.” Malcom had been patient enough, dealing with the transfer of the properties and the details surrounding the Maxwell title. There was nothing left for them to meet on.
“As you wish.” Bram limped off.
“Bram.” He stayed the old man at the door. “There is actually one other thing I’ll require of you and Fowler.”
Sometime later, after he’d gone, Malcom returned to the window and found the area on the pavement where he’d last spied Verity. A painted whore had since taken her place and was in the process of conducting a transaction with a garishly clad dandy. She caught the gentleman’s hand and led him onward to whatever alley served as the place of her work.
And I’m not a fancy woman . . . I’m simply a woman attempting to do her work and care for her family. And you? You are so self-absorbed that you don’t care at all about the plight of anyone . . .
I’ll not think of it.
I’ll not think of her on her own. Verity Lovelace without employment . . . She wasn’t his concern, or his responsibility.
It was done.
He’d shut the door on the Maxwell title and the woman named Verity Lovelace.
Why did that not bring him the satisfaction he expected it should?
Chapter 15
THE LONDONER
Is Lord Maxwell a man . . . or a monster? Conflicting reports have been provided. The world, however, waits to decide for itself the answer to that question . . .
M. Fairpoint
“Well?”
Verity hadn’t even closed the door behind her when that question greeted her.
Bertha stood in wait, wringing her hands.
Verity glanced off to the bedroom she shared with her sister.
“She tried staying awake but fell asleep about an hour past.”
“Good,” Verity muttered, rubbing at her sore right shoulder.
“Where’ve you been, gel?”
“Walking,” Verity said quietly, and balancing herself on one foot, she tugged off first one slipper, and then the next. Letting the pair fall, she wiggled her toes in a bid to bring blood back to the digits, numb from the hours of walking she’d done.
“Walking?”
Think.
There had to be something . . .
Verity rested her forehead against the lead windowpane warmed from the sun.
“There has to be a way,” she murmured. There always was.
“I have it,” she whispered.
“I hope it doesn’t involve that damned tosher,” Bertha muttered, mopping the perspiration from her damp brow. “That one isn’t about to help anyone but himself. Can’t even share the damned sewers. As if he owns them,” she mumbled under her breath.
And for the first time since she’d quit Malcom’s residence and grappled with the uncertainty of her fate, Verity smiled. “Actually . . . it does have to do with Lord Maxwell.”
“Mark my word, gel: he isn’t one for you to rely on.”
No truer words than those had ever been spoken. The help she’d have from Malcom North, the Earl of Maxwell, however, was one she’d herself take. “It involves his residence,” Verity said quietly.
The other woman shook her head. “I don’t follow you, Verity.”
Racing over to the valise where her notes and notepads were tucked, she sifted through. Where is it? Where is it?
“I just organized all that for you,” the other woman lamented.
Verity continued her search. “Here,” she murmured, drawing forth the list. Rising in a whir of the same black skirts he’d gifted her, she held the page over to her nursemaid.
“What is this?” the other woman said, briefly scanning the perfunctory list.
“These are his properties.” Three in total, uninhabited, vacant residences without so much as a servant seeing to their care. One in the heart of London. Her heart raced. Only, for the first time since she’d walked out of his apartments in the rookeries with her head up, it wasn’t panic accounting for the erratic beat. “He has three of them.”
“I see that. And you be thinking he’s going to give any of them to you?” Bertha eyed her like she’d gone mad.
And mayhap Verity had because all this didn’t seem like such a very bad idea, after all. “No.” She smiled slowly. “I’m going to take it.”