“Oh, come, not even the dark-haired, smallish young woman?”
Malcom dunked his face once more in a bid to dull the heat. Damned Giles and his probing.
Giles sighed. “You suck the pleasure out of everything, including a good ribbing.”
“Aye.” The other man spoke an absolute truth. “Is there a problem with your assignment for the evening?”
Other toshers complained over the tunnel assignments; Giles had only ever accepted the weekly maps he’d been given and never questioned those orders. It was, in short, the reason Malcom had the relationship he did with him.
“I merely felt, given the news, that it required a visit to congratulate you.”
The news? That gave Malcom pause, and carefully reaching for a dry cloth, he blotted his face. “Congratulate me on what?”
The other man blinked slowly. “Why . . . about your news.”
Warning bells jingled in his mind. “What. News?” When the other man was too slow to answer, he growled, “I asked, what news?”
Giles jumped, and then muttering to himself, he leaned down, fished around in his bag, and drew out a stack of papers. Malcom was already crossing the room. “Here.” He tossed the newspapers.
Malcom caught them to his chest.
“Front page. Of every newspaper.”
He’d been on the damned front pages of every last gossip column for the first months of the discovery of his existence. When he’d eluded all their damned reporters, he’d been relegated to the safer middle and back pages.
Malcom’s gaze collided with the headline across the front.
A UNION MADE IN . . . THE DIALS
All of London is abuzz with talk of the Earl of Maxwell’s recent and unexpected marriage. The lady herself, as much a mystery as her husband, is known by Lady Verity, and was recently seen exiting the Grosvenor Square residence. Her past is as cloaked in secrets, with the exception of her romantic meeting and then whirlwind—
Courtship?
“Keep reading.”
He glanced over the top of the paper.
Giles gave a nudge, urging him to finish, confirming Malcom had spoken aloud.
Returning to the article, Malcom resumed scanning the main story there.
It is a marriage that has taken the ton by storm.
For a long moment, Malcom didn’t move. The page remained trapped in his fingers, his gaze riveted on the words before him. He’d read them, so he knew they were real. And yet . . . they couldn’t be. For nothing captured in the article was in any way . . . accurate. The damned minx, determined to have a story, had provided another one. A different one . . . a fictitious one that involved a fake marriage between them. At last it made sense why the desperate fortune-hunting fathers and their daughters had stopped darkening his doorstep. And here he’d been feeling guilty about the young woman’s state. He’d fought guilt—an unwanted emotion—at the thought of her alone. Hungry. Struggling to survive in the cold world they both had the misfortune of inhabiting. When all along, she’d been playing her usual games . . . all in the name of a damned story. God, there was no end to her ruthlessness.
“I trust you wished to keep it secret, then?”
“A secret?” What was the other man on about?
“Your . . . marriage?” Giles said, his words more a question than anything.
His fists curled into reflexive balls of rage, and he crushed the copy of The Londoner. Ignoring that question, he tossed aside the papers and grabbed for his lawn shirt. Pulling it over his head, he dragged on his boots and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” Giles called after him.
“I have a meeting,” he gritted out. “With my wife.”
God help her.
“I shall love you forever. You have changed me in every way. There is no one and nothing like you.” Verity’s impassioned vow was met with a loud giggle from her sister.
“You’re silly.” Seated on the wide four-poster bed with her knees drawn up, her form was dwarfed by the mattress and bedding, making the young woman appear impossibly small and girlish.
“Oh, hush. You are not showing proper appreciation.” Clutching the bar of shell-shaped soap, Verity held it to her chest and sighed.
“It’s soap.” Livvie giggled again. “We’ve had soap.”
“Not like this and you know it.”
Nay, the ones they’d had of the past were coarse against the skin. These were the comforts their father’s other family had enjoyed through the years. Verity had never resented their existence, as they were no more responsible for their luck in life than she was for her ill fortune. But this? The smooth, fragrant bars, soothing against one’s skin? She would have been hard-pressed to not find jealousy in them.
There was a light scratching, like the spare cat they’d taken in once to catch the rodents in their apartments. A moment later, the door was opened by a footman, and an army of servants came forward, bearing a porcelain tub and buckets of steaming water. Her cheeks heating with a blush, Verity hid the bar of soap behind her back.
Bertha came trailing in behind the small entourage with an all-too-familiar frown on her face.
“Thank you, Jemmy, Jeremy, Travis, and Miranda,” Verity said after they’d set up the bath.
“My lady,” they acknowledged with a series of matched sets of bows and curtsies before streaming from the room.
Miranda lingered in the doorway. “If there is anything else you req—”
Bertha closed the door in the young woman’s face, drowning out the remainder of that offer.
“That was rude,” Verity scolded.
“Schooling me on manners, are you? My, if you haven’t fallen right into the role of household mistress and proper lady,” Bertha drawled. “If you were a proper lady, you’d know that lords and ladies don’t thank the servants.”
Frowning, Verity returned the creamy bar of soap to the floral porcelain dish at her vanity. “That is preposterous and rude.”
“And it’s the way of their world. Or should I say your world?”
At that slight emphasis, Verity felt another wave of heat bathe her cheeks in a blush. She stole a peek over at her sister; however, Livvie gave no outward indication that she’d detected those subtle nuances of sarcasm.
“Verity was just vowing her love to her soap,” Livvie called over to Bertha.
“Was she?” Bertha asked, glancing to the younger Lovelace sister.
Livvie scooched herself to the end of the bed and swung her legs over the side of the mattress. “Oh, yes. Though I do say she’s shown far more devotion and regard for her soap than she has the earl.”
Oh, bloody hell. And with that, reality came ripping through yet another moment of pretend Verity had stolen for them. It wasn’t her fault that society had taken her appearance in the formal residence as something more. Or that they’d believed her to be the countess.
Bertha folded her arms. “And why is that? Hmm?”
Drat her old nursemaid. She’d been opposed to Verity’s plan since the start, and hadn’t let up on her steely resolve to see them flee the only luxuries they’d truly known in more years than she could remember.
“And when am I going to meet him?” Livvie asked, glancing between Verity and Bertha. “I expected he should have come to live with us by now. Given that it is a love match.” Her brow dipped, and she troubled her lower lip in a way so very similar to Verity’s telltale gesture of unease. “It is a love match, is it not?”