Verity dropped her gaze out the window once more.
And as he stood there, he had the niggling feeling that she’d say no. And he didn’t know what in hell he’d do if she did. Because he couldn’t turn her over to the law, even if the termagant had betrayed him and stolen from him. Her spirit didn’t deserve to be crushed in Newgate. “What will it be, Verity?” he asked impatiently.
The young woman faced him. Fear and fury mixed in her eyes in an exquisite blending. Had he really found her ordinary at their first meeting? She was an entrancing specimen of courage and strength. “Very well,” she said quietly. “I’ll agree to your terms, Malcom.”
He schooled his features to keep from revealing his shock. Sweeping his arms wide, he made her a mocking bow. “Then I shall leave you to your own. Until tomorrow morning, wife.”
With that, he took his leave, unable to shake the feeling that the Devil was, in fact, female, and Malcom had unwittingly shaken hands in an agreement that could never end well for him.
Chapter 18
THE LONDON GAZETTE
RECENTLY MARRIED!
With the Lost Earl having wed, Polite Society is left now with questions not only about the gentleman himself but also about the woman he’s taken as his wife . . .
E. Daubin
“You are cracked in the head.”
Aye, sometime between the moment Malcom had left Verity’s rooms and a long, sleepless night, Verity had come to the same conclusion as her childhood nursemaid. Either way, it still couldn’t be spoken aloud. Any of this. “Hush.”
“I won’t,” Bertha said. Roughly turning Verity by the shoulders, she set to work slipping the pearl buttons into their respective hooks. “What have you gone and agreed to?”
“A plan that will save us,” Verity said tightly. Just as she’d been responsible since she was a girl of twelve for the welfare of not only a baby sister but also the older nursemaid who’d cared for that sister. And yet, how easy it was for Bertha to call Verity out for the salvation she’d grasped at.
“All you know of the man is that he’s ruthless.”
“I said hush,” Verity whispered, looking pointedly at the doorway. Servants were always underfoot. Such knowledge came from the servants who’d been sources while she’d worked at The Londoner, as well as the short time she’d lived in Malcom’s household. “And he’s not . . . ruthless.” She felt compelled to defend him. Because . . . it was true. He’d saved her before, and offered her security. And he’d vowed not to touch her . . . unless she wished it. And you want him to touch you as he once did before . . . “Not entirely ruthless,” she muttered when Bertha forced her back around to meet her gaze.
“You’d romanticize what he’s done?” Verity may as well have sprouted a second head for the way her former nursemaid eyed her. And using the same charges that Malcom had leveled at her. “He’s threatened you at every turn, and now of a sudden you trust his word. Turn,” she muttered, guiding Verity about once more. She slid the last button into place.
Fully dressed, Verity faced her protective nursemaid. “What other choice do we have?” she demanded, and displeasure tensed the older woman’s mouth. “I’ll tell you the answer to that: none. The answer is none. We’ve no home, no employment, barely any funds. Now we do.”
“For how long?”
“It is for a year.” Verity took Bertha by the arms and lightly squeezed. “A year of us not worrying about where we’ll go or what we’ll eat or wear. Think of it, Bertha.” She spoke in cajoling tones.
“You made a deal with the Devil, gel,” Bertha said, unmoved.
Aye, that was also true. “At least we’ll not perish on the streets or end up in Newgate.” With that reminder, she let her arms fall.
“We wouldn’t have ended up in Newgate if you hadn’t concocted a plan to pass yourself off as some nobleman’s wife.”
Blast Bertha for always being correct. “Regardless of the decisions I should or should not have made, it’s done. He made the offer; I agreed.” Stalking over to the pine double-door armoire, she clasped the heart-shaped handle and whipped it open. The row of bows and bonnets hanging from hooks along the front panel shook. Verity grabbed the first bonnet her fingers touched, an intricately woven article with a distinct brim and a wreath of pale-pink primroses circling the crown.
“And what happens when you want to get out from under this life, Verity?” Bertha asked quietly, and Verity froze with the pronounced brim clenched in her fingers, the bonnet hovering just above her head.
Get out from under this life . . .
The other woman spoke of Verity one day tiring of the arrangement, as though it was a certainty. “It is just a year.” And yet Verity had toiled for eighteen. She’d worked until her fingers had bled, and risen before the roosters. Now she’d be permitted to seek out employment as a reporter without the pressure of each story she penned being all that put food on her table and a roof over their heads. “This is the best I have to hope for,” she finally said, jamming her bonnet on.
“Here,” Bertha muttered, and coming over, she took the long peppermint-striped ribbons and set to tying them. When she’d finished, she adjusted the neat bow under Verity’s chin. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Like your mother.
It whispered in the air, not even needing to be spoken aloud.
“I’m not my mother.” In love at seventeen with a roguish earl, she’d given up all hope of respectability and a secure life. “I’m thirty years old.”
Bertha smiled sadly at her. “Age doesn’t make a woman immune from heartbreak, gel.”
Heartbreak? “Heartbreak. Heartbreak?” she repeated incredulously. “That is your worry, Bertha?” Verity had learned at her mother’s knee the folly in trusting one’s heart to the worst possible person. And there could be no doubting that as merciless, unbending, and dangerous as he was, the Earl of Maxwell was nothing if not the worst possible man a woman might entrust her heart to. “I assure you, I’ve no intention of having my heart broken over or by Malcom North.” Malcom North, who looked at her as if she were the grime in the sewers he traveled nightly. Even as he set her heart racing whenever he was near. Even as she still found herself dreaming of the two moments he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless.
“Aye, and that is the look that tells me I’d be mad to not be afeard for you, Verity.”
At the old woman’s ominous warning, shivers traipsed along her spine. “I’m going to be fine. Better than fine.” She made her lips curve into a smile as she patted her former nursemaid’s hand. “More than a year with nothing to worry after? It is a gift, Bertha. Enjoy it.”
Only, as she gathered up her satchel and started from the room, she could not shake the feeling that those false assurances had been as much for her as for Bertha.
With the nursemaid’s warnings ringing in her head, Verity set out in search of her husband. Since she’d first met Malcom in the sewers, she’d faced his deserved suspicion and anger. Was such a man even capable of the pretense of a doting, madly-in-love spouse? Was she even capable of it?