His chest squeezed. Damn her for making him care.
“Why, we go our own ways as any proper lord and lady would. Society would expect nothing less of an earl and countess. My story, when sold, will bring you coin enough to keep you comfortable until you find yourself some other work, somewhere far away from”—me—“London.” Then he wouldn’t have to again think of all the ways in which he’d been played the fool by Verity Lovelace.
Her face fell. “I can’t leave London. All the major newspapers are here.”
Malcom dropped his hip on the back of the sofa. “Then it seems we are at an impasse, because the moment it was discovered the Countess of Maxwell was employed by some ragtag gossip column, questions would swirl. And then research would be conducted into our marriage. Whereas if it is understood you prefer the country, no one will give you”—and more importantly—“or me another thought.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
He tried—and failed—to make something out of that quiet utterance.
Verity glanced past his shoulder, not meeting his eyes. “Why would you go through all of this?” Her voice faintly quivered.
“I get, simply put, the only thing I desire—my freedom. The ability to return to St. Giles and live there without intrusion.”
Verity didn’t say anything for several moments as she hugged herself in another lonely little embrace. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I suspect regardless of my answer you’d ask it anyway.”
“Why would you want to return to the rookeries? Why would you want to face the threats that go with living there and doing what you do?”
It wasn’t her business. She didn’t deserve any more from him than she’d already taken, and yet for some reason, it was important that she understood. “Why do you write?”
She cocked her head.
Malcom motioned to that worn satchel that she’d stormed his home with weeks earlier. “There are other things you might do in the name of survival. Why choose writing for some newspaper?”
Verity thought for a moment. “It is what I know.”
“Is it what you love or what you know?”
“Both,” she said automatically. “I didn’t always write for The Londoner, but I always wanted to. There is something freeing in the work I do. It’s honest. It challenges me in ways that other, equally honest work wouldn’t.”
“And that is why I’m a tosher. That is why I’ve no interest in a fortune I didn’t build from a family I don’t even remember. I’ve built my existence with my bare hands.” He turned his palms up. “Wading through muck and waste is eternally less glamorous than holding a fancy title, and yet there, I’ve been the master of my destiny.” When there’d been none to save him, he’d saved himself.
Her eyes softened. “I see.”
And he resisted the urge to shift because he saw that truth in her eyes.
Verity brought them back to the proposal at hand. “And my being banished from London. This would be—”
“Forever.” He brought his lips up in a coldly mocking smile. “Given that you’d be trading a prison sentence in Newgate for an assignment in Grosvenor Square, I don’t see there’s much for you to consider.”
She held his gaze. “What of my work?”
“What of it?”
“If I agree to your terms, I’d want to continue writing for The Londoner or any paper that would have my articles.”
Articles that would be about him.
“They wouldn’t all be about you. I would, however, exchange that story for employment, which I’d keep as long as we’re together.”
Regardless of the nightmare she’d made of his life, he admired the young woman’s spunk. Verity Lovelace had to be the only woman in the realm who was looking her future, fortune, and title—albeit a false one—square between the eyes, and only asked after her job. Malcom shrugged. “As long as we’re together, I don’t care what work you do.”
Wordlessly, she wandered over to the spot he’d quit at the vanity. Falling to a knee, she studied the remnants of that enamel mirror. Ever so carefully, she picked up shard after shard, dropping them into a neat little pile. Performing the work of a servant as though she’d been born to the role. And yet her language, the way she carried herself, everything about her, screamed of one who’d been born to an elevated rank.
Who was she . . . Miss Verity Lovelace? Who was she really?
And why do I have the hungering to have those questions about the young woman answered?
She abruptly stopped that distracted cleaning. “How long would our partnership be in effect?”
What in hell would be sufficient to satisfy the ton? “This is your world. What would you advise?”
“It is not my world,” she said automatically. “I merely write of it.”
“A year, then.”
“A year,” she cried out. “But . . .”
“The end of the Season is approaching, and then, come the next Season, there’ll be too many questions if my new wife has suddenly gone missing.”
She chewed at her lower lip. “If I do this, time will be carved out each day when I interview you.” And now she would set terms of her own. “I get my story, Malcom.”
“You get your story.” And he would get back his freedom.
Verity took several jerky steps toward the door. As if to flee. As if to escape. And then she shifted course and headed for the window. Drawing the gold velvet curtain back, she peered out at the street below. That glass panel reflected every troubled plane of her expressive face. Unaware as she was of the vulnerable display that window made of her, she proved, for all his suspicions of her, just how lacking in artifice she, in fact, was. “And . . . will there be other requirements for me?” she murmured, her voice threadbare. “Carnal ones?”
Carnal ones? He repressed the grin pulling at his lips. “No, Verity. I’ll not make love to you”—he layered a deliberate pause into his words—“unless you ask me to.” In which case, he’d happily make love to her. He’d set out to tease, and yet a tantalizing image presented itself: Verity at the center of the enormous bed that was even now turned down. Verity, with her arms outstretched, reaching for him as she parted her legs and moaned his name.
He struggled to maintain an even breath.
“I wouldn’t . . . ask you, that is. To . . . to . . .” Her toes curled into the carpet, scrunching the fabric and leaving little indentations upon it. “To do that,” she finished weakly. “What else would be required of me while we are together?”
“To maintain a proper facade of husband and wife.”
“Presenting ourselves before Polite Society.”
Did she seek clarification or to talk herself into that task? Malcom himself would rather face a firing squad, and by the greyish-white pallor of her skin, this proved one area where they were remarkably the same. “Aye.” This, however, would spare him from any more interested, potential fathers-in-law. “Those details you would be responsible for working out.” He knew few of the secrets Verity Lovelace carried, but he’d wager his own life that she’d gleaned how the ton lived.